
Class Lfijlj 



PRESENTED \S\ 



VIRGINIA SCHOOLS 

BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION, 



WITH A SKETCH OF 



FREDERICK WILLIAM COLEMAN, M. A., JT^ 



LEWIS MINOR COLEMAN, M. A. 



r 



DEIJVERED BEFORE THE 

SOCIETY OF THE ALUMNI 

OF THE 

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, 
7t(ne 2yt/i., iSSS, 



W. aORr>ON McCABE, 

TETERSBURG, VA. 



PUBLISHED BY A STANDING ORDER OF THE SOCIETY. 



CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. : 

CJnvnicle Steam Book tuid yob Office. 
1890, 






y 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

For valuable information in regard to Frederick William 
Coleman, my grateful acknowledgements are specially due 
his life-long friend and class-mate, Colonel Frank G. Ruffin, 
of Richmond, and his old pupils, Professor Edward S. 
Joynes, M. A., LL. D. of the University of South Caro- 
lina, and Professor Gray Carroll, M. A., of Fauquier ; 
also to Gov. Jno. L. Marye, of Fredericksburg, and Dr. 
John Roy Baylor, of Caroline, both old " Concord boys." 

In preparing the sketch of Lewis Minor Coleman, apart 
from my personal recollections, I have been greatly in- 
debted for many important details to his widow, Mrs. Mary 
Ambler Coleman, of Fauquier, and to the Rt. Rev. Thomas 
U. Dudley, M. A., LL. D., Bishop of Kentucky, long a 
pupil at " Hanover." Reference has also been made to 
the admirable sketch of Lewis Coleman by his closest 
friend. Professor Charles Morris, M. A., published in the 
Uii ivcrsity Mem orial. 

Touching the genealogy of the Colemans, my thanks 
are due to Mrs. Alice Coleman De Jarnette, of Caroline, 
niece of Frederick W. Coleman, and to George W. Flem- 
ing, Esq., of Hanover, half-brother of Lewis M. Coleman. 

I desire also to make acknowledgment to my friend. 
Dr. Bennett W. Green, of Norfolk, and to Mr. Frank 
Rives Lassiter, of Petersburg, both keen antiquarians, for 
verifying references to colonial records. 

In appending such a volume of notes and number of cita- 
tions to so slight a contribution to our educational history, I 
may, perhaps, lay myself open to the imputation of affectation 
of research and vanity of display. But, after mature de- 
liberation, I have deemed it best to make them. The field 
of investigation is "virgin soil," and this is far from an 
exhaustive discussion of this most interesting subject. 
The scanty information contained in the text has been 
gleaned from a very considerable number of books. These 
books, with scarce an exception,; hav« no indexes, and the 
references I have given may p.r.cvve suggestive and render 
no small service hereafter to' 'some one, who may possess 
the requisite leisure to make a more thorough study of 
our colonial secondary education. It is almost needless 
to say that only a portion of the address was delivered. 

\uthor 

«'erson> 



Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Ahimni, Ladies and Gen- 
tlemen : 

I come to speak to you of two men who deserved well of 
the State — two men who wrought a great and lasting work 
in Virginia, yet whose names are to-day but a mere mem- 
ory to all save kinsmen and friends, and whose services, 
illustrious as they were, are fast becoming but vague tra- 
dition. 

I shall speak of them in homely fashion, as befits the 
theme; for their lives were in truth so simple, so direct, 
so veracious, that they disdain, as it were, all efforts at 
brilliant rhetoric, and check with robust scorn the rip- 
pling periods of studied eulogy. 

Both of them carried off the highest honors of this Uni- 
versity — both of them devoted their great attainments and 
commanding energies to the furtherance of her fame and 
of her usefulness — and to both of them belongs in almost 
equal measure the supreme distinction of having so 
changed the whole face of secondary education in this 
Commonwealth, and of having so raised and ennobled the 
profession to which they consecrated their lives, as hence- 
forth drew to it no mean part of the very flower of our 
youth. 

I come to speak to you of the life and work of Frederick 
William Coleman, the virtual founder of Concord Acad- 
emy, and of his nephew and pupil, Lewis Minor Coleman, 
founder of Hanover Academy — as truly the pioneers of 
the New Education in our Virginia of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, as were Colet and Erasmus the pioneers of the " New 
Learning" in the England of the sixteenth. 

With a rough impatience, characteristic of the high 
spirit and imperious nature of the man, the elder broke 
sharply with every tradition of "the old order" as to 



4 

methods of instruction and the treatment of boys, while 
happily for the permanent success of the bold experiment, 
he was promptly seconded by the courageous efforts of his 
gentler pupil, who caught up the spirit of the master whom 
he revered, and, by many wise modifications, developed to 
full fruition the noble, though crude, ideals of his kinsman. 

Working on essentially the same lines as did Arnold of 
Rugby, when as yet even the name of the great English- 
man was unknown to them, they wrought so honestly 
and fearlessly, with such manly enthusiasm and single- 
ness of purpose,, that within a brief space of years they 
raised, as I have said, the whole tone of sec ondary educa- 
tion in the State, both as to methods and morals, and so 
improved the quality of academic instruction, that this 
University in turn was enabled to advance the standards 
of the higher education and establish such severe tests of 
scholarship as would have been manifestly unjust prior to 
that time.* 

Not often is it given to a pioneer to look upon the full 
fruition of his venture, but happily public opinion in Vir- 
ginia was ripe for revolt from the old monastic ideas of 
school discipline. The tiny spark kindled in the neglected 
"broom-straw" fields of Caroline spread with lightning-like 
rapidity, and both of these men lived to see, as the fitting 
crown of their labors, the establishment of schools in every 
section of the State — in Tidewater and Piedmont, in the 
Southside and in the Valley — created by sheer force of 
noble example — informed with the same high spirit as that 
of "Concord," and fashioned on the same model as that of 
" Hanover." 

And at the very outset, let me say that, apart from the 
great reforms they established as to methods of instruction, 
it is difficult to overestimate the debt which the profession 
eif teaching, as a profession , owes these men. 

*Col. Ruffin dwells on this point in his admirable letter to me in regard 
to Frederick Coleman's work. 



5 

It is idle to tread delicately and use ambiguous phrases. 
Up to the time that their decisive influence in shaping the 
lives of young men began to make itself felt as a social 
power to be taken into account, and the notable results of 
their chosen work had compelled recognition of the in- 
herent dignity and nobility of their calling, it is but bare 
truth to say that, save by grudging acquiescence, the 
teacher, as a teacher, rarely " sat above the salt." 

If the teacher happened to be a clergyman, he received, 
of course, the respect due his cloth. 

But I am speaking of the teacher pure and simple, and 
of the social status of his calling in the eyes of the ruling 
class. 

The Virginian, along with his strain of English blood, 
inherited his full share of what is euphemistically called 
" English conservatism," and, late into the present century, 
many a man, who in theory held extreme democratic doc- 
trine as to equality, denied it in practice on more than one 
social point, and clung with true English tenacity to the 
traditions of the eighteenth century society. Exceptions 
there were, of course, even outside the clergy, as we shall 
presently see in the case of the progenitors of the Colemans, 
but, as a rule, the schoolmaster was looked upon by the 
Virginia gentry with a feeling somewhat akin to that with 
which the private tutor and domestic chaplain was re- 
garded in the great houses in the days of "good Queen 
Anne" — when he was held a sort of upper menial, who 
humbly withdrew from the table after the first course, 
unless my lord was in his cups, and, calling another bot- 
tle, bade him remain as the butt of his tipsy satire, or my 
lady was graciously pleased to challenge him to a game of 
tric-trac to while away the long, dull winter evenings. 

And to speak truth, there had been much in the charac- 
ter of the early Virginia school-masters — much in the 
character of many of their successors in the present cen- 



tury — to justify this feeling of contempt for their calling. 

Pardon my dwelling for a space on the deplorable lack 
of educational advantages in Virginia, not only through- 
out the whole colonial period, but for many years after the 
Revolution. 

Mr. Cabott Lodge, in his ''History of the English Colo- 
nies in America,'' tells us that " there is no indication in 
the statutes of any desire in Virginia to provide educa- 
tion." This is by no means true, as a careful reading of 
Hening* abundantly proves, but it is true, unfortunately, 
that these educational enactments were allowed to slumber 
quietly in the statute-book. 

Unquestionably, there was no system of elementary or 
secondary education in the colony, nor is the reason far to 
seek. 

In his recent monograph on " William and Mary Col- 
lege,'' Dr. Herbert Adams, of the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity, says : 

"Virginia was a new country, extraordinarily attractive 
from an agricultural point of view. Her settlers, instead 
of gathering in towns and villages, as the settlers of New 
England were by lazv required to do, dispersed more and 
more, imitating the English model of rural society already 
established by representative Virginians. It might well 
be expected that it would take a much longer time to de- 
velop an educational system in colonial Virginia than in 
Massachusetts or Connecticut, which were both made up 
of compact village republics. It took the University of 
Michigan nearly fifty years to get fairly underway even 
with the aid of a national land grant, good territorial leg- 
islation and the progressive spirit of the great West, of 
the nineteenth century. The Virginians were well enough 
disposed towards schools and colleges, but circumstances, 

*History of the Eng. Colonies in America, p. 74; but see Hening, II, 
25) 30, 37. Foote's Sketches of Virginia, p. 39. 



such as physical geography and political economy, were 
against them."* 

Sir William Berkeley, in 1671, in reply to the Lords 
Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, touching the pro- 
gress of learning in the colony, said : "I thank God there 
are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not 
have these hundred years ; for learning has brought diso- 
bedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing 
has divulged them and libels against the best government ; 
God keep us from them both."t 

Substantially Berkeley's hope was realized. 

True, owing to the energy and courageous persistency 
of James Blair, " William and Mary " was chartered in 
1692 and firmly established. But that was all. 

All the Stuart governors of the colony were hostile to 
general education, and how influential men in the mother- 

*Adams's College of William and Mary, p. 14. 

fHening II, 511-517. Patrick Copeland, chaplain in the service of the 
East India Company, was the projector of the first English free school in 
North America, a building for which was commenced at Charles City, and 
in 1622 was also elected President of the College at Henrico. Owing to 
the Indian troubles he never came to Virginia. In 1625 he went out to 
Bermudas, at a salary of 100 marks as minister, and to have " a free school 
erected for the bringing up of youths in literature and good learning." In 
1626 the Bermudas Council was urged to support the free school. The 
governor, in writing to London touching the matter, growls, as Berkeley 
did nearly fifty years later, " I wish we had ministers contented to preach 
the gospel and let this free school alone until we are free of debt." See 
Neill's Virginia Carolorum, pp. 196, 197. See Foote, p. 11. 

Dr. Adams {^William and Mary, p. 13) says, in regard to Berkeley's crusty 
utterance : " The times were not yet ripe for classical education in Vir- 
ginia, for this was what the term ' free school ' meant in the seventeenth 
century. It was free in the sense of teaching the liberal arts, preparatory 
to college training. In old England and in her colonies, free schools were 
originally synonymous with Latin schools or grammar schools. It would be 
as absurd to identify the ancient and modern meanings of free schools as 
to confuse a modern grammar school with the earlier or classical use of that 
term." It is with great diffidence that I dissent from the opinion of such 
an accomplished scholar as Dr. Adams, but I must do so in regard to the 
meaning of the term in colonial Virginia. See Virginia Caiolorum, pp. 



country regarded the plea of Virginia for help in fostering 
learning, may be inferred from the amiable reply of Sey- 
mour, the attorney general, when Blair was pressing for 
the issue of the charter authorized by the king and queen. 
As the chief reason for planting the college, Blair urged 
the necessity of a proper training school for ministers of 
the gospel, modestly alleging that Virginians had souls to 
be saved as well as Englishmen. 

"Souls!" cries Mr. Attorney General, "Damn your 
souls ! Make tobacco !"* 

Fifty years after Berkeley's crusty utterance the Bishop 
(in 1723) of London addressed a circular to the clergy of 
Virginia, then somewhat over forty in number, making 
various inquiries as to the condition of things in the par- 
ishes. One of the questions was : " Are there any schools 
in your parish ?" The answer, with two or three excep- 
tions, (and those in favor of charity schools,) was, " None." 
Another question was, "Is there any parish library?" 
The answer invariably was, " None," except in one case, 
where the minister replied, " We have the Book of Homi- 
lies, the Whole Duty of Man, and the Singing Psalms. "f 

Throughout the whole colonial period, such secondary 
education as existed was almost entirely in the hands of 

113,197. Afc'iide,!, 2()S. IIcniiig,\l\, -p. ^\. Jones's Present State of Vir- 
ginia, p. 84. Through the courtesy of Franklin B. Dexter, Esq., Librarian 
of Yale University, I am also enabled to cite the following passage from 
the " New Haven Records," as indicating the meaning of " free school " 
in colonial New England in the seventeenth century : " The 25th of I2th 

mon[th], 1641 Itt is ordered that a free schoole shall be sett up in 

this towne and our pastor, Mr. Davenport, together with the magistrates, 
shall consider whatt yearly allowance is meete to be given to itt out of 
the como stock of the towne, and allso whatt rules and orders are meete 
to be observed in and about the same." 

*Foote, p. 152. Historical Sketch of IVilliaui and Mary (Morrison), p. 33. 

fMeade's Old Churches and Old Families of Virginia, I, page 190 ; but 
Hugh Jones in his Present State of Virginia (1724), says : " In most Parishes 
are Schools (little houses being built on Purpose) where are taught English 
and Writing ; but to prevent the sowing the Seeds of Dissension and 



the "parsons," who on their glebes, or, if unmarried, at 
the houses of the great land owners, conducted what were 
long known as the ^'Parsons Schools.'"^' 

It is not a pleasant thing for a Virginian and an Episco- 
palian to say, but a more disreputable class of men than 
the early Virginia parsons, it would be difficult to imagine. 

They diced, rode to hounds, backed their favorite birds 
at the county cocking-mains, could call a bottle as gal- 
lantly as any roaring young squire, and, like His Rever- 
ence Parson Sampson, in Thackeray's Virgmiaiis, were 
quite ready, when they came down out of the pulpit on 
Sunday, to give or take odds against the favorite in the 
great " Four-Year-Old Sweepstakes," to be run presently 
at Williamsburg. 

The cold and worldly spirit which pervaded the Church 
of England at the time in the mother-country, was only too 
faithfully reflected in the Colonial Establishment, and such 
contemporary memoirs as have come down to us leave 
little room to doubt that our Virginia parsons, instead of 
setting a pious and godly example to their spiritual cures, 
but too often aped the manners and habits of the most dis- 
solute of the laity, and were as subservient to the great 
land-ownersf as any rural vicar in England to the lord^of 
the manor. 

Well-authenticated tradition has, however, handed down 
an amusing instance of a doughty parson in Tidewater, 
who was anything but subservient. 

He and his vestry quarreled, and the vestries, you must 
remember, were a great social and political power in those 

Faction, it is to be wished that the Masters or Mistresses should be such as 
are approved or licensed by the Minister and Vestry of the Parishes, or 
Justices of the County ; the Clerks of the Parishes being generally most 
proper for this Purpose ; or, (in Case of their Incapacity or Refusal) such 
others as can nest be procured." (Page 70.) 

*Meade I, p. 190. 

f Jones's Present State of Virginia, p. 104. Meade I, p. 191. 



10 

days, being composed almost exclusively of the ruling 
class* — from words they came to blows — and the parson, 
who was a man of notable physical strength, not only 
thrashed single-handed the whole opposing array, but 
added a deeper pang to the bitterness of defeat by justify- 
ing his conduct in a sermon on the next Sabbath from the 
text in Nehemiah : " A}id I contended zuith them, and 
cursed thcui, and smote certain of them, and plncked off 
their liairy^ 

Do not misunderstand me. 

Assuredly, among these early Virginia parsons, in 
whose hands was the secondary education, there were not 
a few men of godly walk and sound scholarship. Espe- 
cially is this true of the clergy of the seventeenth century. 
But in the eighteenth century they steadily declined in 
character, and the great majority of them were, as good 
old Bishop Meade sorrowfully says, men of "most evil 
living.":}: 

Of those who conducted excellent schools early in the 
eighteenth century, may be mentioned the Rev. Archibald 
Campbell, who long taught a famous school in the county 
of Westmoreland, which, according to tradition, counted 
among its pupils John Marshall and James Monroe. || The 
Rev. Thomas Martin, § also master of a school in this 
" Athens of America," as Westmoreland was proudly 
called in those early days, who prepared James Madison 
for Princeton College ; and, notably, the Rev. James Maury, 
of Orange, T^ an elegant scholar and zealous teacher, who 

*Meade I, p. 151. 

\Meade I, p. 18. 

\Mt-ade l,Y>'t>- 16, 163, pass. Foote, pp. 34, 310. Westover Mss. I, p. 7. 
Life of Rev. Dcverciix Jarratt, passim. But see too Foote, p. 149. 

||See Meade I, p. 159. 

§See Rives' Life of Aladisoii, vol. i. Princeton College During the Eigh- 
teenth Century, p. 78. 

^The plaintiff in the celebrated " Parson's Cause," in which Patrick Hen- 



II 

was the preceptor of many eminent Virginians, chief of 
them, Thomas Jefferson, who remained his lifelong friend. 

In these Parsons' Schools, Latin and Greek, according to 
the fashion of the time in England, were the chief subjects 
taught. But instruction was given in Algebra, Euclid and 
Land Surveying, and we find French and Spanish also 
taught in the once celebrated school conducted by an eru- 
dite Scotch "Dominie," Donald Robertson,* whom Madison 
long afterwards, when Secretary of State, gratefully remem- 
bered as his first preceptor, and termed " the learned 
teacher of King and Queen county, Virginia." 

But according to the old-fashioned ideas, the strong point 
of the Parsons' Schools was the discipline. As Thackeray 
says, in describing that famous scene, when that resolute 
little woman, " Madame Esmond," ordered the Rev. Mr. 
Ward to administer a flogging to that high-strung young 
"Virginian," George Warrington, " the bacnline method 
was quite a common mode of argument in those days," 
and lads of mischievous spirit made light of being "horsed," 
as the phrase then was, by pedagogues, whom they yet 
looked down upon as their inferiors. 

Speaking of a once famous schoolmaster, Parson O'Neil, 
who taught in your neighboring county of Orange, Bishop 
Meadef describes with sympathetic gusto his methods of 
inculcating obedience : 

ry, representing the defendants, first madi hiuiijlf famous by his treasona- 
ble utterances against the King, which practically won tlie case for his 
clients "despite the law and the evidence." — Wirt's Life of Patrick 
Henry. James Maury had a flourishing school at the foot of Peters' Moun- 
tain, in Orange county. His son. Rev. Walker Maury, succeeded him, 
and afterwards moved the school to Williamsburg, (as we sliall see fur- 
ther on), where he conducted the most successful academy in the South. 
Another son, Matthew, was also a teacher and clergyman. A/eade II, p, 44. 

*See Rives' Life of Madison, vol. I. 

\Meade II, p. 90, Parson O'Neil, we are told, was " more a teacher than 
a preacher." Another "T)ominie," noted for his unsparing use of the rod, 
was the Rev. John Cameron, D. D., a graduate of King's College, Aber- 



12 

"Flogging," says the worthy Bishop, "was a main in- 
gredient in the practice of his system. He had a summary 
method of reducing and gentling a refractory youth. 
Mounting him upon the back of an athletic negro man, 
whom he seems to have kept for the purpose, the culprit 
was pinioned hand and foot as in a vice, and, with the un- 
sparing application of the rod to his defenceless back, was 
taught the lesson, if not the doctrine, of passive obedi- 
ence." 

I may add that there are many men yet living, who 
preserve a smarting remembrance that the good Bishop 
himself, who taught school for many years before his ele- 
vation to the Episcopate, wielded with lusty arm what 
Shakspere calls "the threatening twigs of birch," and 
ever possessed a most robust faith in the efficacy of that 
remedy which King Solomon prescribed as a certain pre- 
ventive against the spoiling of children. 

Touching elementary instruction in the colony. Sir Wil- 
liam Berkeley declared that the people of Virginia followed 
"the same course that is taken in England out of towns ; 
every man according to his ability instructing his chil- 
dren." "We have forty-eight parishes," growls His Ex- 
cellency, "and our ministers are well paid, and, by my 
consent, should be better, if they would pray oftener and 
preach lessT'^ 

The first legacy by a resident of the American plantations 
of England for the promotion of free education zvas given 
by Benjamin Symmes, of Virginia. This was in 1634, 
four years before John Harvard, a non-conforming clergy- 
man of England, who had been resident in the colony of 
Massachusetts but a single year, bequeathed the half of 
his estate and his entire library to the college, which now 

deen, who came over to Virginia from Scotland in 1770, and long taught a 
select classical school in Lunenburg county, where he was also minister of 
the parish. 

'^Hening, II, 511 sqq. Foote, p. 34. 



13 

bears his name. Symmes, by his will, made Feb'y I2th, 
i634-'5, gave two hundred acres of land on the Poquoson 
River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay, "together with 
the milk and increase of eight cows for the maintenance 
of a learned and honest man to keep upon the said ground 
a free school, for the education and instruction of the 
children of the adjoining parishes of Elizabeth City and 
Kiquotan, from Mary's Mount downward to the Poquoson 
River."* 

The example of this first American benefactor to the 
cause of free education was not without results in his sec- 
tion of the colony, for we find that forty years later, in 
1675, worthy Master Henry Peasley "doth devise six 
hundred acres of land lying in the parish of Abingdon, 
County of Gloucester, together with ten cows and one 
breeding mare, for the maintenance of a free schoole for- 
ever, to be kept with a schoole master for the education of 
the children of the parishes of Abingdon and Ware for- 
ever." 

The former of these bequests seems to have been fruitful 
of results, but little or nothing came of the latter, for sev- 
enty-five years after the devise, we find in Heningf an act 
appointing trustees for the care of the property, wherein 
is recited that up to that time (1756), scarcely anything 
had been done to carry out the charitable intention of the 
donor. 

More fortunate was the bequest of Samuel Sandford of 
London — "some time of Accomack county, Virginia" — 
who in 17 10 " for the benefit, better learning and education 
of poor children, whose parents are esteemed unable to 
give them learning, living in the upper part of Accomack 
county in Virginia," devised the rents and profits of three 

*l'irginia Carolorum, p. 113. Hening, I, 252. CanipheU's Hist. Va., p. 
209, 

\Hcning, VII, 41. See Meade, I, p. 329. 



H 

thousand four hundred and twenty acres of land, " humbly 
praying the Honourable, the Governor of Virginia, for the 
time being, with the Honourable Council of State, their 
care that the lands by this will given may be appropriated 
for the uses intended and prescribed."* This school 
flourished for many years. 

Occasionally such of the white "apprentices" on the 
plantations as discovered an aptitude for books, were 
given the privilege of attending with their "betters" the 
Parsons Schools, and some of these, in turn, taught, what 
were known far into the present century as, " Old Field 
Schools," which the sons of the gentry were sometimes 
forced to attend for lack of better. 

Washington's first school, in the county of Stafford, 
was an " Old Field School," taught by one of his father's 
tenants, named Hobby, who was also sexton of the parish. f 

His brother, Lawrence, in accordance with the prevail- 
ing- fashion of the times for the eldest son, was sent at the 
age of fifteen to England to receive "a gentleman's edu- 
cation." 

In these schools were taught only " the three royal R's," 
and of how slender was the equipment of the masters, we 
can form some notion from the autobiographical letters of 
the Rev. Devereux Jarratt, who tells us with manly sim- 
plicity that he did not belong to the class of " gentle 
folks " ; that he attended one of these Old Field Schools 
for several years ; learned the trade of a carpenter while 
still a lad ; wearied of it ; and at the age of nineteen was 
induced to become a teacher, notwithstanding his meagre 
preparation. For several years he taught what he calls 
" a plain school " in Fluvanna — then a part of Albemarle — 

*Fiom the county records of Accomac, quoted by Meade, I, p. 265. 

\Irinn::fs Life of Washiiv^ton, I, p. 20. "A convict servant whom his 
father bought for a schoolmaster," according to Rev. Jonathqn Boucher. 
See M. D. Conway's IVashiitgton and Mt. Vernon, p. xxix. 



^5 

at an annual salary of nine pounds, seven shillings, current 
Virginia money.* 

It is pleasant to add that this pious and godly man so 
improved himself while teaching, that at the age of thirty, 
having gone to England for his ordination, he is said to 
have passed the most creditable examination of all the 
candidates presented to the Bishop of London, though 
the majority of the "postulants" were graduates of Ox- 
ford and Cambridge. He returned to Virginia in 1763, 
was an ardent patriot in the Revolution, and down to the 
close of the last century was famous both as a preacher 
and school-master. 

Yet, despite the lack of good schools, elementary and 
secondary, for the great mass of the colonists, there were, 
unquestionably, many highly-educated men in the prov- 
ince, of whom William Byrd, of Westover, and Lewis 
Burwell,t of " King's Mill," stand out as conspicuous 
types. The polished oratory of Richard Henry Lee was 
applauded to the echo by his fellow Burgesses, who took 
the keenest delight in his frequent classical allusions and 
in the exquisite symmetry of his sonorous periods. 

The truth seems to be, that while the poor, as we have 
seen, had few or no educational opportunities, the ruling 
class, numerically small, was from the earliest days keenly 
alive to the importance of securing thorough education 
for their children. 

In the great families, there was not only the parson- 
tutor, but we find the elementary instruction carefully 
looked after by the mothers. 

Such records as have come down to us, afford conclu- 

*It is interesting to note the cost of tuition in these country schools in 
the middle of the i8th century. Mr. Jarratt says : " I now (1752) got a 
school of twelve or thirteen scholars at 20s. per scholar, which was the 
usual price in those days," Life of Rev. Devereux Jarratt, edited by the 
Rev. James Coleman, p. 38. 

\Cooke's Vircrinia, p. 407. 



i6 

sive proof that, in most instances, they were well-equipped 
for the task. Many of them, as ever the idlest reader knows, 
were women of vigorous common sense, of great decision 
of character, accustomed to exact obedience and rever- 
ence, even when their children had grown to manhood and 
womanhood, and withal added to the native Virginia 
mother-wit no mean acquirement. Some of them had 
been trained by their fathers, who, educated in humane 
letters in the mother-country, held it a paramount duty to 
devote a large share of their abundant leisure to the per- 
sonal supervision of the education of both sons and 
daughters."" 

Exquisitely did these Virginia mothers teach the little 
ones the now " lost art of reading," and patiently did they 
ground them in the elements of Latin and in English. 

They knew not a few of the best English authors, not, 
as so many of their fair descendants do, from " hand- 
books," but from the pages of the authors themselves. 

The libraries were small — Shakspere, Dryden, Tillot- 
son's Sermons, Montaigne in translation, " The Spectator," 
Pope, and a few others — but these they knew almost by 
heart, and the letters of many of them, still extant, f dis- 
play a command of vigorous and graceful English, which 
the cleverest Vassar graduate must regard with envy. 

Blessed with a large staff of thoroughly trained ser- 
vants (for your native Virginian always avoided speaking 
of these faithful family dependants as " slaves "), they were 
not only notable housewives, but took the time to instruct 
their chiidren soundly in morals and in the rudiments of a 
liberal education. 

As the boys grew older, if there was no family tutor, 

*See Afemoirs of a Huguenot Family, p. 366. Numberless citations could 
be given from Meade and others. 

■fCf. especially the letters of Mrs. Anne Nicholas (daughter of Col. Wil- 
son Gary, of Hampton), Mrs, Matthew Maury (Mary Ann Fontaine), and 
Mrs. Edward Carrington, (Eliza Ambler). 



i; 

they rode off resplendent in lace ruffles, silver shoe- 
buckles and bravely-laced hat, followed at a respectful dis- 
tance by " Gumbo," to attend some Parson's school in tlie 
neighboring parish, there to be only prepared for Wil- 
liam and Mary. 

But many of the anxious mothers were afraid to expose 
their darlings to the temptations of the gay little capital, 
and the freedom from discipline enjoyed by " the gilded 
youth " of that ancient foundation, who tempered the 
dreary tasks of the Eton and Westminster grammars by 
" keeping race-horses at ye college and betting at ye bil- 
liard and other gaming tables" — venial peccadilloes, in 
which they but followed the example of their reverend 
instructors."" 

Thus, many of them were sent to England to be edu- 

*See extracts from proceedings of the Faculty, Sept. ye 14th, 1752, 
quoted in the Hist. Sketch of the College of William and Mary (Morrison), 
p. 42. Meade, I, 175 sq. Doyle's English Colonies in America, I, p. 274. 
In the curious pamphlet entitled A Modest Anszaer to a Malicious Libel 
Against His Excellency, Erancis A'icholson, may be found an acconnt 
of a "barring-out" escapade on the part of the young collegians. 
As regards William and Mary (in the earlier years of the iSth cen- 
tury at least), the dispassionate student of contemporaneous docu- 
ments, must find much to justify Doyle's assertion that " it was nothing 
better than a boarding-school, in which Blair had no small difficulty in 
contending against the extravagance and license engendered by the home- 
training of his pupils." But he adds, " There was no lack of mental cul- 
ture in Virginia. While the accomplishe 1 an 1 highly-trained country 
gentlemen of the seventeenth century, the Elliot or Hampden, had gradu- 
ally degenerated into the Sir Roger or Squire Western of the eighteenth, 
the Virginia planter had risen in the scale. But the young colonist was 
either taught by a tutor, who was often also the domestic chaplain of the 
plantation, or was sent for education to one of the Northern colonies or 
to the mother country" — I, 274. Very few, if any, went to the " Northern 
colonies." No Virginians went to Harvard or Yale prior to the Revolu- 
tion, and very few to Princeton. But numbers went to " the mother-coun- 
try," See Meade, I, pp. igo, 192. There seems little doubt that among the 
ruling class there was a broader and deeper culture in Virginia in the 17th 
and the early years of i8th centuries than in any of the other colonies, 
save possibly Massachusetts. 



cated at Eton and other famous schools, passing thence to 
the universities, or, perhaps, if they showed no further 
concern for humane letters, being allowed a season in 
"town," to learn from the beaux of Soho and St. James 
"the nice conduct of a clouded cane" and other elegances 
of fashion, wherewith to dazzle the colonial beauties on 
their return. The Lees, the Randolphs, the Nelsons, and 
many others, whose names are famous in Virginia annals, 
were so educated even up to the time of the Revolution,* 
and came back as highly trained as any of their English 
cousins of the time. 

But the young Virginian who ran across the sea for the 
higher education, simply changed his sky and not his 

*The strong individuality of the Virginia planters is shown in their in- 
dependence of each other in the selection of schools in the mother-coun- 
try for their children. The Pages went to Eton, the Meades to Harrow, 
the Corbins to Winchester, the Lees, Beverleys, Boilings, Munfords, Fair- 
faxes and Blands to Leeds Academy in Yorkshire. The choice as to the 
universities was naturally influenced by the preferences of the masters of 
the schools to which the young Virginians were sent. But this was not 
always the case. The Rev. Chris. Atkinson, head-master of the Leeds 
Academy, urged that young Theodorick Bland should be sent to Oxford, 
but he and his father decided for Edinburgh. There were so many Vir- 
ginians attending the medical lectures at the latter University, that they 
formed a " Virginia Club " (1761), one of the first " articles " of which pre- 
scribed that " every constituent of this club shall be a Virginian born." 
The club was established •' for the improvement of its members in anat- 
omy." " Physick " was not in the earliest days of the colony considered 
a fit profession for a gentleman. Theodorick Bland " was among the first 
persons in Virginia that devoted themselves to the study of medicine." 
See Campbell's Memoir prefixed to the Bland Papers, p. xv, sq. and p. xix. 
As a rule, the young Virginian, who went to England to study, went to get 
" a polite education " and not to prepare himself for a profession. Some 
like Wm. Byrd of Westover (a graduate of Oxford), John Ambler of 
Jamestown (graduate of Cambridge), and John Banister of Battersea, stud- 
ied at " the Temple," but they were all young men of ample fortune, and 
had no need to practice the law. Others, however, (e. g., John Blair and 
Sir John Randolph), practiced law on their return to the colony, in which 
many young men of the aristocratic class were members of the colonial 
bar. See Wynne's Notes to A Memoir of a Portion of the Boiling Family 
in England and America, pp. 33, 34 and 37 sqq. 



i9 

mind, and never hesitated a moment as to where his alle- 
giance lay, when the foolish policy of Lord North denied 
the chartered liberties of the Old Dominion. 

He had been reared to reverence Church and King, but 
he was as jealous as any Englishman born of his rights 
as a freeman of Anglo-Saxon blood. 

He was deeply attached to the " tiny mother-isle," which 
his father, settled on the banks of the York or the James, 
ever fondly spoke of as " home," but there was bred in his 
bone a still deeper devotion to the principles which, since 
the days of Runnymede, had been the common heritage 
of all English-speaking folk. 

And it is a proud memory for the descendants of these 
young patricians, that, when the dun war-cloud lowered in 
the West, and Virginia was driven to choose between sub- 
mission and resistance, to a man they doffed academic cap 
and gown, and turning their backs on the grey cloisters of 
Winchester and Eton, came trooping home to offer their 
swords to the new nation — ^just as nearly a hundred years 
after, when the rights of Virginia were in jeopardy and her 
soil about to be invaded, her sons, yonder at Berlin and 
Leipzig, at Gottingen and the schools of the Sorbonne, 
tossed aside their books and came swarming back to de- 
fend under her proud Sic Semper the heritage bequeathed 
them by their fathers. 

As Marshal Ney said, when he saw the beardless young 
conscripts rushing in all the joyous valor of youth upon 
the Russian guns at Weissenfels, " C'est elans le sang ! 
C'est dajts le sang!" — "It's in the blood! It's in the 
blood!" 

Beverley in his History and Present State of Virginia, 

published in 1705, tells us* that there were at that time 

"very few Dissenters" in the province, but before the 

middle of the century we find them in every part of the 

*Bk. IV, Part I, Ch. 7, p. 210. 



20 

colony — the Baptists in Fluvanna and Spottsylvania, on 
the sea-coast and in the Valley — the German Tunkers and 
Mennonites in the lower Valley along the Opequon, under 
the shadow of soaring Massinnutton — the Quakers in 
Nansemond and elsewhere — the German Lutherans in 
Madison, along the Rappahannock — above all, the sturdy 
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, some from Pennsylvania and 
New Jersey, where they had tarried for a time with their 
kinsmen, until assured of protection for their religion, 
under the Toleration Act of William and Mary, by His 
Excellency, Governor Gooch, they swarmed southwards 
to take up the rich lands of the smiling Valley of the 
Shenandoah — others direct from across the seas, driven 
from Ulster by English persecution and led by John 
Lewis, father of that Andrew Lewis, who, in fringed hunt- 
ing-shirt, rifle in hand, looks down upon us in "counter- 
feit presentment" of enduring bronze from his pedestal 
yonder in Richmond — the perfect type of that glorious 
stock, which for many a year held the border of our "An- 
tient Dominion" against wild foray of Shawnee and 
Cherokee — that dauntless race, in whose breast "beat so 
strong the fear of God, that there was left no room for fear 
of any other thing," and who, ever counting life itself a 
worthless thing when freedom is at stake, gave Andrew 
Lewis to the first Revolution and Stonewall Jackson to 
the second.* 

Other Presbyterian settlements there were — in the lower 
Valley from the Potomac to Winchester — in Charlotte and 
Prince Edward — notably that in Hanover, where sundry 
heads of families revolting from the worldly preaching 
and practices of the Establishment, knew not at first 
what to call themselves, t but finally became the very cen- 
tre of Presbyterian faith and influence. 

'^Cooke's Virginia, p. 326, 

f For a most interesting account of this secession from the Established 
Church, see Foote, p. 121 sqq. 



2t 

Of all the Dissenters, the Presbyterians were the first in 
point of wealth, character and position ; and, as we might 
naturally expect, the question of providing a sound edu- 
cation for their children early claimed their attention. 

In 1747, Samuel Davies,* afterwards President of Prince- 
ton College, and virtual founder of the Presbyterian church 
in Virginia, came as an evangelist to Hanover county. 
He had been educated at the famous classical school of 
Samuel Blair at Fogg's Manor in Pennsylvania. He was 
a young man of engaging manners, reputed a profound 
theologian, a keen debater, as Attorney-General Peyton 
Randolph afterwards found to his cost,t liberal in his feel- 
ings towards the Establishment, and withal endowed with 
such wondrous powers of eloquence, that Patrick Henry 
declared him "the greatest orator he had ever heard." 

Davies himself was never master of a school,:}: but it 
was owing to his persistent efforts that Virginia owed the 
first classical schools taught by men outside the commu- 
nion of the Established Church. 

The masters were in nearly every instance graduates of 
Princeton, with here and there an assistant from the " log- 
colleges " of Pennsylvania. Thus, we find, between 1750 
and 1760, a good classical school in Louisa, under the 
mastership of the Rev. John Todd,|| of the class of 1747, 
who had as assistant the Rev. James Waddell, reputed one 
of the best Latinists of his day, afterwards famous as "the 
Blind Preacher," whose eloquence William Wirt declares 
in ''The British Spy" was beyond that of Massillon or 
Bourdaloue.§ 

*Foote, Ch. X. 

f The story is told at lengtli in Foote, p. 293. 

:}:"Mr. Davies promoted classical schools, though his multiplied labors 
prevented his being the head of one in Virginia." Foote, p. 221. 
\Pnnceton Coll. in iZth Cent., p. 7. 
%Foote. p. 381, sqq. 



21 

Other teachers from Princeton later on were, Hezekiah 
Balch,* of the class of 1766, who taught a classical school 
in Fauquier, migrating after the Revolution to Tennessee, 
where his strenuous efforts gave an impulse to education 
throughout the whole Southwestern region ; and Daniel 
McCalla,t of the same class, who established an academy 
in Hanover, which he seems to have given up after the 
Revolution by reason of being "eminently social" and 
"not always discreet." 

It will be observed that the old Parsons were not alone 
in their lapses from strict sobriety, for we find in the early 
years of the Revolution, Mr. John Springer, also a Prince- 
ton graduate, calling together the Board of Trustees of 
Hampden Sidney Academy to confess that "he had been 
drunk and did gamble at New London on one occasion,":}: 
"in consideration of which candor the Trustees only sus- 
pended him." As might be expected of so honest a 
youth, he afterwards became one of the godliest men in 
the Presbyterian ministry. 

But the chief schools founded under the auspices of 
Hanover Presbytery were the " Augusta Academy," the 
germ of the present Washington and Lee University, and 
the " Prince Edward Academy," the germ of Hampden 
Sidney College.! 

In 17 7 1, we find the Presbytery, on motion of the Rev. 
Samuel Stanhope Smith, discussing the subject of educa- 
tion, but it was not until three years later, in 1774, that 
William Graham, a class-mate at Princeton of " Light 
Horse Harry Lee," and reputed a young man of notable 

^Princeton Coll. in I'&tk Cent., p. 104. 
f/3. p. 109. 
\Foote, p. 401. 

[The statements in the text touching " Augusta Academy " (afterwards 
"Liberty Hall") and Hampden Sidney are based on Foote's valuable 
Sketches of Virg^inia, Series I. 



23 

scholarship, was invited to engage in a classical school in 
Augusta under the direction of the Rev. John Brown, who 
had been for some years conducting a small "grammar 
school " near Mount Pleasant.* 

In the same year (1774), Presbytery, taking into consid- 
eration (I quote their language) "the great extent of the 
colony, judge that a public school for the liberal education 
of youth would be of great importance on the south-side 
of the Blue Ridge, notwithstanding the appointment of 
one already made in the county of Augusta, and having 
been favored with the company of Mr. Samuel Smith, a 
probationer of New Castle Presbytery in Pennsylvania, a 
gentleman who has taught the languages for a considera- 
ble time in the New Jersey College with good approbation, 
and with pleasure finding that, if properly encouraged, he 
may be induced to take charge of such a seminary, we 
therefore judge it expedient to recommend it to the con- 
gregations of Cumberland, Prince Edward, and Brierly in 
particular, and to all others in general, to set a subscrip- 
tion on foot to purchase a library, philosophical apparatus, 
and such other things as may be necessary for said pur- 
pose. "f 

The subscriptions poured in rapidly, Samuel Stanhope 
Smith was chosen Rector, with a staff of assistants, all 
Princeton men, and in January, 1776, the "Prince Edward 
Academy" was opened. 

The strong point of both Graham and Smith seems, as 
might be expected from their training, to have been Men- 
tal and Moral Philosophy and Belles Lettres.:}: From 
hints dropped here and there in various books, one may 
doubt whether in the ancient languages they were the 
equals of the old Parsons, who, although they had never 

*See also (in addition to Foote) Prin. Coll. in xZtli Cent., p. 163. 

■{•Quoted by Foote, p. 393 sq. 

|See Life of Rev. Archibald Alexander (ed. 1857), p. 18. Foote, p. 461, 



24 

heard of logaoedic rhythms or "the classification of the 
conditional sentence," could read Homer and Demos- 
thenes without a dictionary and quote Horace with an apt 
felicity, which seems to have gone out with the last cen- 
tury. Stanhope Smith remained but three years at the 
"Prince Edward Academy," having been called in T779 
to the chair of Moral Philosophy in Princeton. 

He was succeeded by his brother, John Blair Smith,* 
a man of undoubted force of character, who seems to have 
had the courage of his convictions in things small as 
well as great, throwing down the gauntlet to Patrick 
Henry in debate before the Virginia Assembly on the 
General Assessment Bill, and, with still greater fearless- 
ness, even daring to part his hair in the middle. 

The discipline in both these academies, as well as in 
" Washington Henry Academy," founded a few years after 
in Hanover under the mastership of John Duburrow Blair,f 
of the Princeton class of 1775, was, of course, "baculine," 
and we are told that Graham, a slight, wiry man of middle 
stature, active as a catamount, would without a moment's 
hesitation "horse" the most strapping young backwoods- 
man who dared defy his authority. 

The course of study was in the main that pursued at 
Princeton, and fortunately one of Graham's old pupils has 
recorded the latter's method of hearing recitations, which 
was probably that of his brother-teachers. In the SoiitJi- 
crn Literary Messenger for June 1838, there is an article 
on Graham's school, signed " Senex," who has been iden- 
tified as the venerable Doctor Campbell of Lexington. 

Dr. Campbell visited the school as a lad in 1775, before 
entering as a pupil, and thus describes the scene : 

"I happened at Mt. Pleasant during Mr. Graham's 
superintendence. It was near the hour of recreation. 

*Foote, ch, XIX, and Frin. Coll. in 18M Cent., p. 170. 
\Prin. Coll. in 18M CV"M/.,p. 182. 



-5 

Here was seen a large assemblage of fine, vigorous-looking 
youth, apparently from ten to twenty years of age. They 
were mostly engaged in feats of strength, speed or agility, 
each emulous to surpass his fellows in those exercises for 
which youth of their age generally possess a strong predi- 
lection. Presently the sound of a horn summoned all 
to the business of the afternoon. The sports were dropped 
as if by magic. Now you may see them seated singly or 
in pairs, or in small groups, with book in hand, conning 
over their afternoon's lesson. One portion resorted imme- 
diately to the hall, and, ranging themselves before the pre- 
ceptor in semi-circular order, handed him an open book 
containing the recitations. He seemed not to look into 
the book, and presently closed it, thinking, as I supposed, 
he knew as well as the book. Of the recitations I iinder- 
stood not a syllable, yet it was highly agreeable to the ear, 
sonorous and musical ; and although more than sixty win- 
ters have rolled away since that time, the impressions then 
made have not been entirely effaced from my memory. 
I have since discovered that the recitation was a portion of 
that beautiful Greek verb, Tupto, in which the sound of 
the consonants, pi, tan, viu, theta, predominate. It luas 
observable that during the recitation the preceptor gave no 
instructiojis, corrected no errors, made no remarks of any 
kind. He seemed to sit merely a.^ a silent witness of 
the performance. The class itself resembled one of those 
self -regulating machines of ivhich I have heard. Each 
member stood ready, by trapping and turning down, to 
correct the mishaps and mistakes of his fellows ; and as 
much emulation was discovered here as had been an hour 
before on the theatre of their sports in their athletic exer- 
cises. During this recitation, an incipient smile of appro- 
bation was more than once observed on the countenance 
of the Preceptor, maugre his native gravity and reserve. 
This happened when small boys, by their superior scholar- 



26 

ship, raised themselves above those who were full grown. 
This class having gone through, several others, in regular 
order, presented themselves before the teacher and passed 
the ordeal. The business of the afternoon was closed by 
a devotional exercise."* 

Such was the method of teaching then in vogue, and I 
have quoted this passage from Dr. Campbell's article de- 
scribing the old machine system, f which developed the 
memory at the expense of the understanding, that you 
may contrast it with the vitalizing methods introduced by 
Frederick Coleman, which breathed the breath of life into 
the dry-bones of the dead languages, which taught a lad 
first of all to think, and, developing in healthy fashion his 
mental faculties, enabled him not only to read and mark, 
but inwardly to digest, the highest thought of the great 
masters of the ancient world. 

I may pause a moment to remark that probably no mor- 
tal man before or since the time of Dr. Campbell, has ever 
spoken of Tupto as "that beautiful Greek verb." His de- 
light in it, notwithstanding the drawback that he " under- 
stood not a syllable," certainly reminds one of the pious 
old lady, who confessed that she didn't understand much 
of the sermon, but insisted that she had been " greatly 
comforted by that blessed word, Mesopotamia." 

Then broke the storm of war. 

*Dr. Archibald Alexander complains of the great paucity of schools in 
"the Valley," when he was a boy (just before the Revolution), and the 
character of some of the masters may be judged from that of his first 
teacher, one John Reardon, like "Hobby," an English convict, whom his 
father bought at auction in Baltimore, during a business trip to that town. 
Reardon had been to a classical school (he averred) in London, and had 
"read in Latin as far as Virgil" and in Greek "a little of the Greek Testa- 
ment." "The master, as being my father's servant, lodged at our house 
and ofUMi carried me in his arms part of tlic way (to school). I had no fear 
of him, as at home I was accustomed to call him Jack, and often conveyed 
my father's commands to him." Li/(\ p. I2. 

\Il>.\. 13. 



27 

Our experience in Virginia during the Civil War en- 
ables us to form an intelligent idea of the degree to which 
letters were silent amid the clash of arms. 

The burning defiance of Patrick Henry had kindled the 
flame of patriotism in the breasts of young and old, and 
his impassioned utterances found ready echo in the hearts 
of gentle and simple alike. 

For the time all religious differences and social antago- 
nisms were forgotten, and the fires of Revolution were to 
weld into a compact mass of resistance the composite ele- 
ments of Virginia society. 

The Churchmen of Tidewater and Piedmont, as of 
right, took the lead in the great revolt, and their figures 
shine out the noblest and grandest in the broad light of 
that heroic time. 

But Baptists and Presbyterians followed with glad alac- 
rity, for to them Revolution meant not only civil, but 
absolute religious, liberty, and from Accomac on the Ches- 
apeake to the furthest outposts on the Alleghanies, the 
Dissenting ministers were thundering from their rude pul- 
pits that " Rebellion to Tyrants was obedience to God." 

The lads of '"J^y, like the lads of '6i, were eager to prove 
that Valor counted manhood, not by years, but by deeds of 
daring, and even in that age of implicit filial obedience, 
many were deaf to the remonstrances of parents and 
guardians. More than half of the young scions of the 
ruling class at William and Mary threw aside their books 
with true Cavalier impatience, and exchanging gown for 
sword, as did also three of their professors, sought the 
headquarters of the Continental army. "Augusta Acad- 
emy" became "Liberty Hall Academy," and Graham 
found his young Scotch-Irish mastiffs straining at the 
leash. He himself preached the duty of volunteering, 
and, practicing what he preached, was elected Captain of 
the Rockbridge contingent under the call of '78. Though 



28 

his company was not called into active service, his patri- 
otic spirit in the darkest days everywhere infused courage 
into doubting hearts, and in 178 1, when Tarleton and his 
marauding troopers were reported advancing on Staunton 
to capture the Virginia Assembly, Graham hearing the 
news while on his way to the old Stone Meeting House, 
wheels his horse instantly, and, spurring hotly back along 
the North Mountain road, rouses the men of Rockbridge 
and Augusta, and hurries with them "to the front" to 
hold Rockfish Gap. 

A thin, silent, dark-browed man, sarcastic of speech, 
and "a good hater"; but, let it never be forgotten, a zeal- 
ous teacher and a dauntless patriot. 

" Prince Edward Academy," too, has received the sig- 
nificant name of " Hampden-Sidney," and Smith has 
enrolled his boys over sixteen into a company, with David 
Witherspoon as lieutenant and Samuel Woodson Venable, 
grandfather of the Chairman of your Faculty, as ensign ; 
and in 1777, the Governor calling for " Co. i " of the 
Prince Edward militia, we find the Rector-Captain advis- 
ing the lads to exchange their number for " No. i " with 
the militia, and so presently they go marching gaily away 
to Williamsburg, in their "hunting-shirts dyed purple," 
to meet a threatened invasion of the British.* 

How vividly does all this recall to us, who were stu- 
dents here in '61, the stirring days when we too, emulous 
of the glories of our sires, marched away, one company 
in Garibaldi shirts of red and one in soberer blue,t to give 

*Foote, p. 400. 

fin i86o-'6i, two student-companies were enrolled at the University of 
Virginia — "the Garibaldi Guard" (red shirts), Capt. Jas. T. Tosh, and 
" the Southern Guard " (blue shirts), Capt. Edward S. Hutter, Jr. These 
companies went to "the front" the night Virginia seceded. After the seizure 
of Harper's Ferry, they returned to the University and disbanded, the 
members at once enlisting in various commands. Five hundred out of the 
six hundred students in the University enlisted before June ist, i85i. 



^9 

proof that we were true to our blood, and that the old 
spirit of '"j^ still pulsed bravely in the veins of those who 
had been jealously nurtured in the proud traditions be- 
queathed them by their fathers. 

Yet something was done by dint of strenuous endeavor. 

William and Mary carried on in a fashion its educational 
work until the seige of Yorktown, when it was tempora- 
rily closed to be used as a hospital for the sick and 
wounded, a purpose which it again served in 1861, and 
the academies of " Liberty Hall " and " Hampden-Sidney " 
flourished to some extent under the persistent efforts of 
Graham and John Blair Smith. 

But the Parsons' Schools were well nigh swept away. 
The clergy of the Establishment were in the main loyal to 
the crown, only twenty-eight of the ninety-one* who held 
cures at the beginning of the struggle, remaining steadfast 
to their posts. Some, doubtless, resigned their charges, 
because they could no longer collect the stipend allowed 
them by law, and were thus forced to seek a livelihood 
elsewhere. But the majority were staunch Tories, and, 
making their way into the British lines, fared homewards. 

In the excited state of the public mind, even those who 
remained faithful to the principles of the Revolution, were, 
in many instances, looked upon with suspicion, and shared 
most unjustly, as subsequent events proved, somewhat 
of the odium, which popular indignation directed against 
their class. f 

Nearly all of them in time rose to be officers (two attaining the rank of 
Brigadier General). Many distinguished themselves conspicuously on the 
field and an appalling proportion were slain in battle. 

*Meade, I, 17. 

fYet, as Meade says," there was a large share of noble patriotism in the 
clergy of Virginia. Mr. Jefferson declares this most emphatically." 
Meade, I, p. 266 sq. Jeffersons Works, I, pp. 5 and 6. One of the clergy, 
Rev. Arch'd McRoberts, Rector of St. Patrick's Parish, Prince Edward, in 
1776 left the Establishment and embraced Presbyterianism, A curious 
case, See Life of Rev. Deve7'eux Jatratt. Meade, I, p, 449, 



36 

Still here and there, is a gleam of light. 

The Rev. Walker Maury, son of the James Maury, of 
whom I have spoken, was conducting a large and admira- 
ble classical school in Orange county, and having been 
induced to remove it to Williamsburg in 1782, as a sort of 
appendage to William and Mary College, where there was 
then no professor of "the Humanities," it speedily attained 
a great reputation for elegance and thoroughness of schol- 
arship, not only in Virginia, but throughout all the South- 
ern colonies. More than one hundred pupils were in 
attendance from Maryland to Georgia inclusive. There 
were four Assistant Masters, or ushers, as they were 
called, and the school appears to have been managed with 
great zeal and good judgment. The boys acted the plays 
of Plautus and Terence in the original, and were well 
drilled in Greek and in the easy Mathematics.* It was to 
this school, both while in Orange and afterwards in Wil- 
liamsburg, that John Randolph of Roanoke, was sent, 
together with his older brothers, Richard and Theodorick. 

Here pacing slowly around the statue of Lord Bote- 
tourt, then in the Old Capitol, he conned his "Westmin- 
ster Greek Grammar" with such diligence as to be able to 
repeat it verbatim from cover to cover. 

'Tis asserted that when the Latin comedies were acted, 
young Randolph was always chosen to play the female 
parts, for the alleged reason that " there was a spice of the 
devil in his temper." This is, of course, one of those 
gratuitous flings, which every masculine mind, in proper 
training, must at once reject. The probable reason for the 
choice lay in the fact that John Randolph with his liquid 
dark eyes, fringed with sweeping lashes, and his delicately 
chiselled features, was reckoned at the time the most beau- 
tiful boy in the school. 

But dark as were the days for education during the 
•Garland's Life of John Randolph of Roanoke, pp. 20, 21, 



31 

struggle for independence, still darker were the years suc- 
ceeding the peace. 

In 1782, Liberty Hall Academy was incorporated with 
the right to give degrees, the first act of incorporation 
granted by the Assembly after the virtual ending of the 
Revolution ;* and, in the next year, Hampden Sidney ob- 
tained a charter as a college with the customary powers 
and privileges. But both were in a depressed condition, 
as was also William and Mary.f which suffered greatly 

*Foote, p. 456. Touching the cost of tuition, about the time of the Rev- 
olution, at these high schools (for they were nothing more), Foote says of 
Liberty Hall : " During the first sixteen years of the Academy, tuition had 
been forty shillings the session ; after the new buildings were prepared in 
1794, the tuition was fifty shillings the session. From the tuition money 
the salaries of all the teachers were to be paid. Some years he graham) 
received nothing from the Academy," p. 476. 

At Hampden Sidney, board, tuition, &c., for the year was ^100 Virginia 
money. See Foote, p. 401. 

The poverty of the teachers of "ordinary" schools was proverbial. 
Devereux Jarratt " hearing of a place in Albemarle — now Fluvanna — at a 
Mr. Moon's, set out — his all, excepting only one shirt, being on his back, 
and that which was in his hand was lost soon after." Meade, I, p. 470. 
Life of Rev. Devereux yarrett. Drury Lacy (born 1758), of Chesterfield, 
who went for a short time to a noted boarding-school in Powhatan, kept 
by Rev. Mr. McRea, an Episcopal clergyman, was employed by his poor 
neighbors to teach a school, when he was but sixteen. " I have heard him 
remark," says his son, " that so very limited were his means, that he was 
under the necessity of walking barefoot to and from the school-house. 
The covering for his head a rough straw-hat." (Quoted by Foote, p. 491.) 
Lacy was, however, a determined student, became tutor in Hampden-Sid- 
ney College and afterwards Vice-President (exercising all the functions of 
President) of that institution. Foote, p. 497. The condition of teachers 
of such schools was no better in New England. See Ale Master' s Hist, of 
the People of the United States, vol. i, p. 21 sijq. 

fSee Foote, 403. La Rochefoucault, as late as 1796, says : " There is no 
State so entirely destitute of all means of public education as Virginia, 
and it may be fairly said that the only college she possesses is the most 
imperfect in point of instruction and the worst managed of any in the 
Union." Travels though the United States of N'orth America, etc., by the 
Duke de la Rochefoucault Liancourt (London, 1799), ^'^^- '•'> P- 227. 
Touching the expences of students at William and Mary, he says that the 
total " expence to their parents amounts to about a hundred and sixty or a 
hundred and seventy dollars a year." Ill, p. 49. 



32 

from being generally reputed a centre of deism and the 
hot-bed of all those wild French socialistic ideas,* which 
within ten years were to flame out in mad fury in the 
country which gave them birth, send Louis Capet to the 
guillotine, and plunge the fair land of our allies into all 
the sanguinary horrors of "the Terror." 

Undoubtedly, the financial distress just after the close of 
the war, and, indeed, for years after, had much to do with 
the general apathy touching education. 

Many gentlemen, who had left good estates in flourish- 
ing condition when they rode away to join the army, found 
themselves well-nigh ruined on their return, through the 
long neglect of their business, the loss of their negroes, 
who had been run off by the British, and the wasteful 
mismanagement of overseers. The men, who had been in 
a way, the patrons of learning, were harassed by debt and 
were daily growing more impoverished owing to the low 
price of tobacco. f A fever of speculation had seized upon 

*Meade, I, p. 2g ; II, p. 292 and elsewhere. The college was also in bad 
i-epute on the score of alleged dissipation. That it long enjoyed this rep- 
utation, may be seen from the following passage in a curious little book, 
which has recently come into my hands. The author is said in the " Trans- 
lator's Preface" to be "a young Frenchman of ancient family," who came 
to Virginia in the early years of the present century : 

" Harry Whiffler, I believe, was born somewhere in the county of King 
and Queen. His father was a rich planter in that quarter, who, somehow 
or other, took a notion in his head, that it would be a very clever thing to 
bring his son up to the trade and mystery of a gentleman. He was accord- 
ingly sent, in due time, to the college of William and Mary, where he soon 
went through the whole circle of vices taught in that polite seminary. It 
is true he didn't make quite so great a progress in the sciences. He passed, 
however, for a lad of great genius, principally upon the ground of his lazi- 
ness. For it was observed, that he played cards all night and lay abed all 
day, and, therefore, according to the logic of the place, it was justly in- 
ferred that he must have brilliant talents, if he could only be prevailed 
upon to show 'em." Letters from Virs^iuia. Transl. from the French 
(Ralto., 1816), p. 53. The author describes his visit to the college in " let- 
ter xv" (p. 124 j(/(/.), ascribing its deplorable condition of decay to the 
prevalence of rampant infidelity and unrestrained dissipation. 

\McMaster's Hist. People of U. S., vol. i, p. 273. 



them, who, on the failure of the wild ventures upon \vhich 
they had embarked, were plunged into hopeless bankruptcy. 

Bad as had been the morals of the old " Parsons," their 
loss, from an educational point of view, was now griev- 
ously felt. 

Their places were taken in a measure by Scotch and 
Irish dominies, graduates of Glasgow and Aberdeen, and 
of Trinity College, Dublin, who came over in considera- 
ble numbers on the conclusion of the peace. 

Most of them were sound scholars and established 
schools of good repute in Norfolk, Richmond, and other 
-towns. They seemed to have been distinguished for three 
things — an accurate knowledge of Latin prosody, a fer- 
vent belief in the efficacy of the rod, and a love of drink. 

Well do I remember, as a boy, hearing from an old gen- 
tleman* on the lower James an account of his school life 
"in the nineties" under the Scotch tutor, whom his father 
employed to teach his own children and those of the 
neighboring planters — a notable Greek and Latin scholar 
and a zealous disciple of the "baculine" method. There 
was a morning and afternoon session, the school being 
dismissed for dinner from one until three. According to 
the universal custom in those hospitable old days, a great 
bowl of rum-punch was every day at noon placed upon 
the side-board in the dining-room, and all who chose, 
young and old, might help themselves. During the morn- 
ing session, the dominie was alert and would pounce upon 
the luckless victim, who stammered over his Euclid or 
made a false quantity, with the awful brow of Jove himself. 
Then came the recess, when the chief delight of the boys 
was to watch the frequent surreptitious visits of the domi- 
nie to the dining-room "to see whether dinner was ready." 

At dinner again, there was crusty port and Madeira, 
*Dr. John Mittgfe, formerly of Weyanoke on James River. 



34 

which had " doubled the Cape," on the excellences of which 
the discriminating Scot was wont to enlarge until the tears 
stood in his eyes. 

At three, began the afternoon session. 

At first, there was a studied precision of movement and 
great affectation of vigilance, but alas, like honest Bar- 
dolph, "his zeal burnt only in his nose" — thicker and 
thicker grew the native burr, gradually the master's ex- 
planations became more and more incoherent, until, finally, 
his head fell gently on his breast, and, like the grooms in 
Macbeth, he "mocked his charge with snores." 

Day after day this went on, yet the boys, I was told, 
learned fairly well, and, such were the lax notions of the 
time as to drinking, that the only notice of it was a laugh 
at the dominie for not having a stronger head. 

Mr. Jefferson,* it is true, as far back as 1779, in conjunc- 
tion with his co-revisors of our laws — Pendleton and 
Wythe — drew up and submitted to the General Assembly 
a plan for a general system of education, providing for the 
establishment of three classes of seminaries : 

1. Elementary Schools, to be maintained at the public 
charge and fj-ce to all. 

2. General Schools, corresponding to academies and col- 
leges, for the education of such as had time, means and 
inclination for further culture, to be assisted to some extent 
from the public treasury, but to be supported chiefly by 
the fees of the pupils. 

*The statements in the text touching Mr. Jefferson's efforts to promote 
education in Virginia are based on Tucker's and Randall's lives of Jeffer- 
son, the " Correspoudencc of Jefferson and Cabell" and " A Sketch of the 
I'niversity of Virginia" (Richmond: 1SS5), ascribed to Professor Jno. B. 
Minor, LL. D., of the University. At the time the address was written, 
Dr. Herbert Adams's admirable monograph, " Tliomas Jefferson and the 
Ujiiversity of Virginia " (Washington : 18S8) had not yet appeared. Dr. 
Adams' work must rank as the definitive history of our University and en« 
titles him to the lasting gratitude of every Virginian, 



is 

3. Au University, in which should be taught in the high- 
est degree every branch of knowledge. 

The plan thus submitted was not even considered by 
the Assemby until 1796, when, owing to what the first 
Governor John Tyler calls "the shameful parsimony of 
the legislature,"* only that portion of the bill relating to 
Elementary Schools was adopted, and that with such 
amendments as made it almost barren of results. 

But from 1784 to.i8i6, we find on our statute books no 
less than seventeen acts authorizing the raising of money 
by lotteries for the establishment or maintenance of acade- 
mies in various parts of the State. f 

Some of these appear to have enjoyed a considerable 
popularity for a time, and a few of them prolonged a pre- 
carious existence into " the thirties," but none were of 
conspicuous merit. These, were doubtless, "the paltry 
academies," over whose inefficiency Mr. Jefferson utters 
his moan. 

From 1 80 1 to 1809, Jefferson was busied with national 
affairs as President of the United States, but on his retire- 
ment into private life in the latter year, though we find 
him writing to his friend, John Tyler, that his mind is 
" dissolved in tranquillity,":}: his correspondence proves 
that he had by no means relinquished his scheme for edu- 
cation, formulated thirty years before, which ever lay 
closest to his heart in his lusty old age. Could he but see 
an efficient system of general education firmly established, 
he was ready, he declared, to say with old Simeon, ''Nunc 
deniittas, Doininey\ 

Through the enlightened and persistent efforts of Tyler, 

'^Letters and Times of the Tylers, by Lyon G. Tyler (Richmond : 1884), 
vol. i, p. 237. 

f See Jefferson' s Correspondence, iv, p. 430 sqq. 
%Letters and Times of the Tylers, i, p. 248. 
\Jeff. Corresp., iv, p. 341. 



36 

then Governor of the State, who, as a member of the legis- 
lature, had enthusiastically supported the plan submitted 
in '79, a bill drawn by James Barbour,* the Speaker of 
the House, was reported in January 18 10 for the estab- 
lishment of the "Literary Fund," and enacted into a law 
on February 2nd of the same year. 

This was by far the most important and far-reaching of 
all the acts of the legislature touching education up to that 
time. Five years later, in February 181 5, a resolution, 
" undoubtedly inspired by Jefferson, "f directed "the Pres- 
ident and Directors of the Literary Fund" to elaborate a 
system of public instruction, and in December of the next 
year they made a report, recommending a scheme essen- 
tially the same in many respects as that proposed in 1779. 
A bill, embodying the recommendation, was passed by the 
House, but defeated by the Senate on the ground that the 
sense of the people should be taken on a matter involving 
so great an expenditure of the public money.:}: 

Undeterred by this second failure, Mr. Jefferson again 
prepared a third bill, which he trusted would reconcile the 
conflicting views of all parties. His scheme was not ' 
wholly adopted, yet far more was gained than in 1796, for 
the act of 1818, while appropriating the greater portion of 
the income from the "Literary Fund" to the establish- 
ment of Elementary Schools for the poor, gave ^15,000 a 
year to endow and support a University to be styled "The 
University of Virginia." 

Before this, Mr. Jefferson and some of his neighbors had 
undertaken to revive the declining "Albemarle Academy" 
by liberal private subscriptions, and with such success, that, 
on Jefferson's suggestion, the original plan was enlarged, 
and the academy incorporated as "Central College" in 

'^Letters and Times of the Tylers, i, p. 242. 
- \Sketch of Univ. of Va., p. 6. 
\Tiicker s Life of Jefferson, ii, p. 399. 



37 

February i8i6. This may be regarded as in some sort 
the germ of our present University. 

On January 25th, 18 19, a date never to be forgotten, the 
University of Virginia was established by act of Assem- 
bly, and, from that time until his death in 1826, engrossed 
to the exclusion of all else the time and thoughts of the 
foremost man of his age. 

Thus, finally was laid the foundation of real university 
education, not only in Virginia, but in America.* 

The condition of education in Virginia during the first 
quarter of the present century may be clearly traced in the 
correspondence of Jefferson with Joseph Cabell and with 
other friends, which draws such a picture of the ineffi- 
ciency of our schools and colleges, as makes one doubt 
whether there was not sounder teaching in the colony from 
1700 — 1725 than in the commonwealth from 1800 to 1825. 

During all this period great numbers of our lads were 
sent North to be educated in the schools of New England, 
notably at the celebrated Phillips Academy at Exeter (N. 
H.), and Jefferson bewails in one of his letters that half of 
the students at Princeton were Virginians'. f 

As late as 1820, we find him writing to Cabell : "The 
mass of education in Virginia before the Revolution placed 
her with the foremost of her sister colonies. What is her 
education now ? Where is it ? The little we have, we 
import like beggars from other States ; or import their 
beggars to bestow on us their miserable crumbs.":}: 

The beggars, whom we imported to bestow on us their 
miserable crumbs, were, of course, "the Yankee school- 
masters," who, from 18 10 to 1830, came down in swarms 
from New England to Virginia and could be found in 
every town and well nigh in every county of the State. 

♦Adams, The College of William and Mary, p. 12. 
\yeff. Corresp. iv, p. 340. 
Xlb. iv, p. 334. 



As I have spoken bluntly of the old Parsons, it is due 
the truth of our educational history that I should speak 
with like freedom of these later apostles of learning. 
Some of them were men of high character and fair attain- 
ments, and founded families of great respectability in this 
state. But it is simple truth to declare that the great body 
of them were not men to inspire respect for their calling 
either by their learning or their bearing. 

" Why he calls us ' fclloius,'' " was the astonished and 
delighted exclamation of a Rugby lad soon after Arnold's 
first coming to that school as head-master, and, in this 
hearty use of the familiar name employed among them- 
selves, we recognize the great school-master's instinctive 
knowledge of how simply the love and confidence of boys 
may be won and held. 

But there was nothing of this sort among the precise 
and formal pedagogues, who presided over our Virginia 
schools. No boy was called by the familiar home-name 
of " Jim ' or "Tom," but "James" and "Thomas" with 
a precision of nasal intonation, that would suggest to the 
least imaginative the ghostly glitter of " skeleton specta- 
cles," long-fingered black-gloves, and a Pecksniffian snuffle. 
Their pronunciation of Latin was, like Byron's. prosody at 
Harrow, "such as pleased God," and they were as igno- 
rant of Greek accents or the nicer points of Greek syntax 
as they were of the Talmud. 

Touching the management of boys, they brought with 
them all the detestable traditions of the colleges, where 
they had been trained. 

They prided themselves on their slyness in espionage, 
and put a premium on lying by attempting to compel a 
boy when "caught in a scrape" to "peach" on his com- 
rades. 

They delivered themselves of long homilies on the sin- 



39 

fulness of fighting and tried to persuade healthy and high- 
spirited lads that the distinctive mark of perfect gentleman- 
hood, was, when smitten one cheek, to meekly turn the 
other. The boys, of course, listened demurely in public 
to these dreary moral platitudes and guffawed over them in 
private ; and as soon as the master's back was turned, if 
Master Jack or Tom had any little account to be settled, 
they slipped off their jackets and " had it out," as I trust all 
true Virginia lads of grit will ever do. 

The boys despised rather than hated them. These were 
the days of "barring out" and wonderful "cold-water 
traps " for deluging the teacher in his sudden nightly raids 
into dormitories, and all the other ingenious devices that 
our fathers have gleefully described to us, whereby they 
made wretched the hapless New England pedagogue, who 
commonly revenged himself for the contemptuous insubor- 
dination of the older boys by unmercifully thrashing the 
smaller ones. 

In December 1825, Jefferson, writing to Wm. B. Giles, 
afterwards Governor of the state, says : " I learn with great 
satisfaction that your school is thriving well and that you 
have at its head a truly classical scholar. He is one of the 
three or four whom I cati hear of in the State. We were 
obliged last year to receive shameful Latinists into the 
classical school of the University ; such as we will cer- 
tainly refuse as soon as we can get from better schools a 
sufficiency of those properly instructed to form a class. 
We must get rid of this Connecticut Latin, of this barba- 
rous confusion of long and short syllables, which renders 
doubtful whether we are listening to a reader of Cherokee, 
Shawnee, Iroquois, or what."* The " better schools," of 
which this broad statesman and accomplished scholar 
speaks, were to come in good time. 

*Il)., iv, p. 425. Col. Frank Ruffin informs me that that the "truly classi- 
cal scholar" was Mr. Bartholomew Egan, an Englishman and graduate of 
an Eriglish University. 



40 

Owing to lack of money, six years had been consumed 
in the erection of the necessary buildings here, but on 
March 5th, 1&25, the University of Virginia, with a faculty 
small, indeed, but the ablest in America, threw open its 
doors for students. 

Thither, in 1832, came Frederick William Coleman, 
third son of Thomas Burbidge* Coleman and Elizabeth 
Lindsey Coghill, of the County of Caroline. 

Such preparation as he had for college, he owed partly 
to private study, partly to his father, who at the time was 
conducting a school of good local repute on his es- 
tate, known as " Concord." He was sprung, indeed, from 
a family of teachers. His grand-father, Daniel Coleman, 
who had been an officer in the Revolution, taught a school 
for many years after the peace at Concord, was succeeded 
by Frederick's father, Thomas, who, in turn, was succeeded 
by his sons, Atwell and James. Frederick Coleman him- 
self had also taught in his father's school before coming 
to the University. The methods of instruction were those 
of the ordinary Virginia "country school," and Frederick 
Coleman, in after years, would amuse his pupils with a 
hundred droll stories illustrative of his crass ignorance 
when he entered college. f 

Before coming of age, he had settled upon teaching as 
his profession, and it was better to qualify himself for his 
chosen calling, that he came to the University, which, 
owing to the care and discretion exercised by Jefferson in 
the selection of its first faculty, had achieved at a single 
bound, as it were, a great reputation, and made its claim 
assured to the first place in the higher education of Vir- 
ginia. 

He was just twenty-one:}; when he matriculated, and I 

* The name is commonly spelled " Burbage," but Mrs. Alice Coleman 
Dejarnette writes me that it is properly Burbidge. 

fMS. letter of Prof. Edward S. Joynes of Univ. of South Carolina. 
:|:B6rn Aug. 3rd., 1811. 



41 

am told by one who was his closest college friend, that he 
was at that time an almost perfect type of Herculean 
young manhood — six feet, two inches in Ijeight, deep of 
chest and long of limb, "a fellow of infinite jest," the soul 
of every company with his "quaint flashes of merrimcint," 
yet withal possessed of a strong passion for scholarship. 
Nothing could more fully illustrate the vigor of his ac- 
quisitive powers than the surprising facility with which he 
rid himself of the old educational modes practiced at his 
father's school, and mastered the more scientific methods 
of his new and better-trained instructors. 

Within a brief time he was in alJ his classes a mata of 
mark, and, after three years of unbroken success, was 
graduated Master of Arts. 

The period of his residence here as an undergraduate 
was one of high political excitement throughout the coun- 
try, and, eager student as he was, Frederick Coleman, with 
native Virginian aptitude for politics, did not escape the 
contagion. 

His father, who represented his county for twenty con- 
secutive years in the Virginia Assembly, was a "Jefferso- 
nian Democrat" of the straitest sect, and naturally the 
son had been bred in the faith of "strict construction." 
Within two months of his matriculation, South Carolina 
had passed the ordinance of Nullification, and not even in 
i860 was there fiercer contention in Congress, or bitterer 
animosity in humbler debate than everywhere prevailed in 
'32 and '33. 

" Nullification," " the Force Bill," " Compromise Tariff," 
"the Removal of the Deposits" — such were the questions, 
which threatened to rend asunder the nation, and men. 
North and South, hung with bated breath on the utter- 
ances of the mighty gladiatorial trio, who had stepped fnto 
the arena, and who in the council chamber of the nation 

6 



42 

were debating with keenest logic and matchless eloquence 
the issues at stake. 

The head of the Law School here at the time was John 
A. G. Davis, a man of high spirit and notable ability, who 
taught the law as a code of principles rather than a line of 
precedents. Chief in importance o f the departments of 
his chair was Constitutional Law. The text-books were 
the Federalist and what were then known as " the immor- 
tal Resolutions of '98 and '99" and the debates thereon.^' 
A.s in the stirring autumn of i860 students "cut" their 
lectures in the Academic Department to throng the lec- 
ture-room of Jas. P. Holcombe, so, in those exciting days 
of '33, was Davis's lecture-room crowded with eager 
youths, who came to hear him discuss the question which 
Calhoun and Webster were debating on a larger field — 
whether the Constitution was a simple compact or a funda- 
mental law ; and, among all his enthusiastic audience, 
there was no keener listener than Frederick Coleman, who 
applauded in uproarious fashion, as the Professor, arguing 
on historical premises, taught absolute denial of the su- 
premacy of the United States Courts in fixing by con- 
struction the rights of a Btate.f 

At that time he became what he remained to his dying 
day, an enthusiastic politician, and if his boys did not im- 
bibe strict " States Rights doctrine," it was not for lack of 
hearing it vigorously preached. 

In 1835, on his graduation, he joined his brother, At- 
well, in the conduct of the school in Caroline, and called 
it " Concord Academy," the name by which it afterwards 
became so fcimous throughout the whole Southern country. 

Within a year or two, his brother removed to Alabama, 
and Frederick Coleman became sole proprietor. 

He at once swept away every vestige of the old order 

*Lettet^ of Col. Frank G. Ruffin, 

\Ib, 



4^ 

of things, discarding, as I have said, with a contempt 
characteristic of the imperious nature of the man, all the 
traditional methods of discipline. 

That he erred in going as far as he did in this direction, 
none can now deny, but there was everything in the de- 
testable methods of the old system to provoke a man of 
his temperament to such sweeping iconoclasm. 

He had had recent experience at the University of the 
evils resulting from a multiplication of rules and regula- 
tions,* and this experience, added to his imbred impatience 

*Mr. Jefferson's policy as regards discipline in the University contem- 
plated the largest liberty to the students, but the latter through a mistaken 
view of what was expected of them under his system of self-goverment did 
not respond to the appeals made " to" their reason, their hopes, and their 
generous feelings. Lawlessness and riot were for a time rife in the insti- 
tution and became so intolerable that the professors suspended their l«c- 
tures and tendered their resignations to the Board of Visitors. The Board 
met, abandoned the plan of self-government, and ordered a course of rigid 
discipline to be pursued. As was, perhaps, natural under the circumstances, 
the Faculty, in the exercise of their new powers, and smarting under the 
provocation they had received, erred in going to the opposite extreme of 
punishing light offenses with unnecessary severity. Things went on thus 
for several years, the gulf growing wider and wider between the students 
and professors, until matters finally culminated in the once celebrated, but 
now forgotten " Rebellion of '34." (See letter of Mr. William Wertenbaker, 
for nearly half a century Librarian of the University, published in In- 
gram's Edgar Allan Poe, vol. i, pp. 44, 45.) I cannot do better than give in 
Col. Ruffin's own words an account of this " Rebellion of '34" as stated to 
me in his letter of April nth, 1888 : " In that year Professor Bonnycastle, 
then chairman of the Faculty, upon the occasion of some slight and now- 
forgotten irregularity, got the Faculty to pass an order that the students, at 
the sounding of the g P. M. bell, should retire to their rooms, there to re- 
main until six o'clock next morning. Immediately upon the promulgation 
of this order, the students met and a large majority (including those who 
boarded out of the college limits, all of whom were required to be twenty 
years of age) resolved and sent a copy of their resolution to the Faculty, 
that they would disobey the order. Upon this, the Faculty notified them 
that, if they did not repeal their resolution and apologize for their conduct, 
they would be expelled. The students refused positively to yield. At 
tliis stage, the Chaplain, at the instance of the Faculty, interposed and. the 
affair was arranged by the Faculty's withdrawing their demand. I never 
saw proceedings conducted in a more orderly way." Col. Ruffin's letter 
gives a most interesting sketch of student-life at the University from 1S32 
to 183S. 



44 

of all conventionality and restraint, determined him on 
trying the bold experiment of giving his pupils such a 
share of personal liberty as no school-boys had ever before 
enjoyed. Above all, he was resolved that the unwritten 
law of personal honor, and not the fear of punishment, 
shoyld be the controlling power of the school. 

A favorite pupil of his, Master of Arts of this Univer- 
sity, now a distinguished professor in another, thus de- 
scribes to me his first impressions of " Concord :"* 

"'Concord Academy' was a massive brick building, 
surrounded by a few log-cabins, situated absolutely in the 
' old fields ' — no inclosures — no flowery walks — no attrac- 
tion for the eye, such as I had been accustomed to in the 
academies I had attended at the North. Within, all was 
rude and rough — the barest necessities of decent furni- 
ture'> — the table abundant, but coarsely served — the rooms 
devoid of all luxury or grace — no trace of feminine art, 
nor sound of woman's voice to relieve the first attacks of 
hoftje-sickness — everything rough, severe, masculine. 

" I looked and inquired after the ' Rules and Regulations ' 
of the School. I found there were none ! To my horror 
I felt deserted even by the eye of discipline. It seemed 
to me the reign of lawlessness with utter desolation and 
loneliness. But soon I found that there reigned at * Con- 
cord ' the one higher law : Be a man ! — ^that what I thought 
solitude and helplessness, was the lesson of individuality : 
Be yourself. As for discipline there was none in the usual 
sense of the term. Be a man — Be a gentletnati — nothing 
more. Far too little, indeed nothing at all of those rules, 
those proprieties, those methods that belong to the well- 
regulated school. 

'* Obedience and truthfubiess were the only virtues recog- 

*Prof. Edward S. Joynes, M. A., LL. D., of the University of South 
Carolina, whose charming sketch of his school-boy life at Concord and of 
"Old Fred" (contained in a long letter to me March 25th, 1888) i;» well 
worthy of publication. 



45 

nized or inculcated at Concord : obedience absolute to 
Frederick Coleman — his will was law, was gospel, was 
' Concord.' There was not a boy, even of those that loved 
him most, who did not fear him absolutely. And trutJiful- 
niss with courage. All else was forgiven but lying and 
cowardice. These were not forgiven, for they were im- 
possible at Concord." 

Not less extraordinary was the absence of all rules in 
regard to the preparation of tasks and hours of recitation. 
The boys studied when and where they chose, and the 
length of time given to a class varied from thirty minutes 
to three hours, according to the judgment of the instructor. 

Boys were knocked up at all hours of the night, some- 
times long after midnight, and summoned to the recitation- 
room by " Old Ben," the faithful negro janitor, who equally 
feared and worshipped his master. A sharp rap at the 
door, and the familiar cry, " Sophocles, with your candles, 
young gentlemen," would send the youngsters tumbling 
out of bed in the long winter nights, just as they had 
begun to dream of home or of certain bright eyes that had 
bewitched them in the " long vacation." " Many and many 
a time," says Dr. Joynes, " each fellow with his tallow dip, 
have we read till long past midnight and never a sleepy 
eye, while ' Old Fred ' expounded to us Antigone or Ajax." 
" Old Ben " is a character, which I should love to dwell 
on, did time allow. His pronunciation of the names of 
Latin and Greek authors was, I am told, open to criticism, 
but Frederick Coleman's old boys have a hundred stories 
illustrative of his fidelity to his master and his canine in- 
stinct in tracking the boys to their haunts, whenever they 
were wanted. 

Professor Gray Carroll, who took a brilliant Master's 
degree here in '55, tells me that on one occasion, Mr. 
Coleman, in giving out the lesson, inadvertently announced 
the wrong day for the next recitation. The class deter- 



46 

mined to take advantage of his absentmindedness and go 
fishing. No band of Italian conspirators ever exercised 
more ingenuity in hoodwinking the Papal police, than did 
these alert youngsters in concealing their preparations 
from "Old Ben." Silently and swiftly they sped away 
one by one to the trysting place two miles distant, and 
were just casting their lines, with many a chuckle over 
their prospective holiday, when their blood was frozen by 
the terribly familiar cry : " 'Ripides,* young gen'l'men, 
right away, Mars' Fred is waitin'." Fate in the person of 
" Old Ben " was too much for them, and the little proces- 
sion sadly wended its way back to the class-room. 

The law of place was as uncertain as that of time, and, in 
the long summer days, " Old Fred," in such scanty attire 
as would have shocked the sensibilities of Mr. Anthony 
Comstock, surrounded by his eager pupils clad in like slen- 
der raiment, would lie on the soft sward under the great 
trees and " hold high converse with the mighty dead." 

But whatever the hour or the place, all who knew him, 
hold him the greatest teacher of his time. 

Governor John L. Marye, who entered Concord in 1838, 
writes to me : " My schooling up to that time had been 
under the tuition of the old-fashioned teachers, chiefly im- 
ported from the North. Going from a tozvn and having 
been for five years under the instruction (!) of what was 
dubbed ' The Classical and Mathematical Academy ' of 
Fredericksburg, I entered Concord with some complacent 
idea as to my comparative scholarship with that of the 
average boy. You will not doubt that vc\y first experiences 
as a pupil under Mr. Coleman were a startling and hum- 
bling revelation to my young and callow mind. My recol- 
lection is that he succeeded on the very first day of my 
appearing in class before him in convincing me that much 
which I valued as my acqjiirejnents had to be summarily un- 
*This was Ben's pronunciation of the name of a certain Greek dramatist. 



47 

learned. Then followed day by day that exhibition by him 
of the elevated, enlightened and philosophical method of 
instruction, which marked his teaching and made his school 
the pioneer in the grand line of Academies, which followed 
in Virginia." 

Professor Edward Joynes, whom I have already quoted, 
says : 

" Frederick Coleman's teaching ! What was it? Wherein 
its magic power? Why is it still famous after forty years, 
so that like Nestor p.iza zncra-ocacv a.vdoaec. Ah ! I can- 
not tell you. I cannot analyze or describe it. I only 
know that I have seen no such teaching since, and I have 
sat at the feet of Harrison and Courtenay and McGuffey 
at home, and of Haupt and Boeckh and Bopp abroad. 
It was just the immeasurable force of supreme intellect 
and will, that entered into you and possessed you, until it 
seemed that every fibre of your brain obeyed his impulse. 
Like the ' Ancient Mariner,' he ' held you with his glittering 
eye ' and like him ' he had his will ' with you. If I should 
try to define its spirit, it would be by the word self-forget- 
fulness — the complete absorption of Coleman himself, and 
so, by his supreme will-power, of his whole class, in the 
subject in hand, so that every power of attention, intelli- 
gence, sympathy, was controlled by him to the work of 
the hour. If then I should try in a word to define its 
method, it would be concentration. No7t inulta, sed mul- 
tum. He held that the first ' Book ' of Livy contained all 
Latinity, and that 'all the glory that was Greece' was to 
be found in the Heciiha of Euripides. These were his 
pieces de resistance, and he taught them as they were never 
taught before or since. From these as centres or starting 
points, his teaching of Latin and Greek proceeded. A 
copy of the Hecuba, for instance, as taught by Coleman 
would be a literary curiosity. Every line, phrase, idiom 
was made a centre of citation ranging far and wide over 



48 

the plays (we used only the complete texts without " notes " 
at Concord). " Where does this occur elsewhere ?" " Where, 
otherwise f" " What is the difference f " " What is the 
point thus differentiated or illustrated ?" " Why f" — until 
the margin could hardly hold his references. 

" But, indeed, Frederick Coleman's teaching cannot be 
analyzed except by saying that it was Frederick Coleman 
himself. He was a man of massive power of body, mind, 
xvill. Through this power he dominated his boys — im- 
pressed himself upon them — wrought himself into them — 
controlled them by his mighty will-power — roused them 
by his mighty sympathy. 

"As a teacher, he was the greatest of his age — there 
has been no other like him." 

As will be noted above, he used in Latin and Greek only 
the complete texts of the Tauchnitz editions, without notes, 
and was wont to inveigh with sarcastic vigor against what 
John Randolph called "the Yankee editions " of the class- 
ics — which is scarcely to be wondered at, when we remem- 
ber that the best of them then were those edited by Dr. 
Anthon, whose books a wicked Saturday Reviezuer once 
described as "a not first-rate store-house of second-hand 
German learning." 

Like Arnold's, his temper, when aroused, was furious, 
and the stoutest-hearted lad quailed before it. Against 
anything that savored of baseness or meanness, his indig- 
nation rose quickly and mounted swiftly to intense pas- 
sion. Two things, as we have been told, he would never 
forgive — lying and cowardice. He accepted a lad's word 
implicitly, and if he tampered with truth, he must go. 
Fighting he allowed, of course. He was always ready to 
mediate, and, if that failed, he was equally ready to see 
that the fight was a fair one. Bullying he put down with 
a stern hand. If, after the fight, anything remained unfor- 



49 

given, he would adjudicate, and the boys must shake 
hands.* 

The whole nature of the man was instinct with honesty 
and truth, and his high personal courage was proverbial. 
One of the traditions gloried in by Concord boys, who 
worshipped him as a mightier hero than Telamonian Ajax 
or any of their favorite "Three Musketeers," was of the 
day, famous in the annals of Caroline, when Frederick 
Coleman and his younger brother vanquished single- 
handed six strapping rustic bullies, who had long been the 
terror of the court-green. 

Thus, without any law or method, the foundations were 
laid of that noble esprit in morals and thoroughness in 
scholarship, which made " Concord " the most famous of 
Virginia schools. The secret of -his success lay in the 
strong boyish element in his nature, which is a marked 
characteristic of so many men of high ability. 

"His relations with his boys out of school," says one of 
old pupils, t "was not only one of absolute equality, but 
of bonhomie — of intimacy and familiarity — yet such as 
none could ever dare abuse." 

"His whole life," says another, :|: "was spent with his 
boys, and his interest in their work and amusements and 
in them personally was felt by all to be genuine and unaf- 
fected. He seemed to know, almost intuitively, the char- 
acter and mental peculiarities of every boy, and found 
time to adapt his admonition or instruction to each one 
individually, as if his whole business was to make the 
most that was possible of that particular boy." 

" His mind was richly stored with knowledge of many 
things and his thought was always vigorous and original. 
His conversation was a never ending pleasure to his boys. 

♦Professor Joynes's letter. 

IProfessor Joynes. 

|:Professor Gray Carroll. Dr. J. R. Baylor writes me to the same effect. 

1 



50 

Sometimes he would join a knot of them sitting in the 
shade on a summer evening and enter with them into the 
discussion of any subject that happened to engage their ^ 
attention at the moment. Presently the discussion would 
become a monologue. Parties engaged at play in different 
parts of the grounds would drop their bats or their marbles 
and silently gather around. Before long, it would become 
known from room to room that 'Old Fred is talking' and 
the whole school would be collected about him, listening 
with such charmed intentness to his words, that even the 
sound of the supper bell was regarded as an unwelcome 
interruption. His talk on these occasions was solid and 
instructive, and he never made the mistake of talking below 
the intelligence of his hearers. He did not adapt his con- 
versation to them ; he raised their minds to the level of 
his own thoughts." 

" Sometimes, it would be his humor to encourage boys to 
talk, and, while taking his full share in the fun and repar- 
tee, I do not doubt that he was gathering valuable lessons 
about the character and understanding of the boys engaged, 
and the state of the public sentiment in the school. These 
helps to success he had and many more, but above and 
beyond them all, was his great unselfish heart — a heart 
large enough and tender enough to take in the joys and 
sorrows of all about him. We all felt this, and I suppose 
no other teacher was ever so fully admitted into the confi- 
dence of his boys." 

Unquestionably, there was much in the school open 
to grave criticism : the large liberty allowed the boys, 
amounted almost to license — there Avas a general lack of 
puntuality and method in the conduct of the school, until 
Lewis Coleman came as Assistant Master in 1846 — the 
classing of boys was largely governed by chance, instead 
of being based upon careful preliminary examination* — 
♦Professor Gray Carroll and Dr. J. R. Baylor. 



5i 
■> 

there was no environment of those refining influences, 

which have no mean share in determining character. 

Mr. Coleman was himself naturally impatient of all con- 
ventionality and restraint, and \\\s unconscious disregard of 
the minor convenances of life was consciojisly cultivated by 
ardent disciples, who worshipped him and made him their 
model. 

As Oxford men, fifty years ago, were wont to declare of 
Arnold's pupils in the University that they affected, in 
imitation of their master, "earnestness" (with a big E) in 
the most trivial matters, and were " a lot " of solemn young 
prigs, so it was said here at this University that the boys, 
who came up from " Concord " aped Frederick Coleman 
and cultivated a roughness of manner and carelessness of 
attire but little engaging. 

But fortunate was it for Virginia that just when the 
public mind was ripe for revolt from the old systems of 
discipline and of teaching, a man of such sound scholar- 
ship and high personal character, with such intuition of 
boyish nature and faithin boyish love of truth, should have 
risen up in our midst to found a school, which should give 
the death-blow to the old sluggish and pernicious methods, 
and fix the standard of secondary education in the State. 

There might be criticism of the roughness of their man- 
ners, but there was no question here, the court of final 
appeal, as to the superiority of " Concord boys" in the 
domain of scholarship, or of their scorn of all that savored 
of dishonor. 

It was a grand old school, and, as a Virginia school- 
master, I uncover and salute it. 

The reputation of Frederick Coleman as a wonderful 
talker has come down to us, and many stories are still told 
of the originality and cleverness of his conversation. Like 
old Sam Johnson, he was imperious and dogmatic in his 
manner, impatient of dissent where his convictions were 



52 

deep, rapid in articulation, warming up to vehemence in 
voice and gesture as his interest kindled, yet withal with 
such kindliness and honesty shining through the rugged 
lines of his face as made one forget the sting of occasional 
sarcasm and remember only the charm of the wonderful 
monologue. Great as was the divergence in character 
between the two men, one is constantly reminded of Colet 
in listening to the descriptions of Frederick Coleman as 
given by his old pupils — "his lively conversation, his 
frank simplicity, the purity and nobleness of his life, even 
the keen outbursts of his troublesome temper, endeared 
him " to all.* 

The ladies in my audience may be interested to know 
that Frederick Coleman's admiration of the gentler sex 
was such as can be measured by no poor rhetoric of mine — 
such as can only be represented by algebraic formulae, in 
which 1)1 and ii are as conspicuous as in the Church Cate- 
chism. In every section of the state at various times, he 
" met his fate,'' and, though he never married, was in a 
chronic state of " sighing like a furnace." 

In 1849, after fifteen years of unparallelled success, he 
suddenly determined to close the school. He urged many 
reasons for the step to his intimates, who remonstrated 
against his purpose. He had grown to be distressingly 
obese and began to worry about his health. Despite his 
open-handed liberality, where money was in question, 
he had amassed an easy competence — above all, he was 
anxious to push the fortunes of his favorite pupil and 
nephew, Lewis Coleman, who had determined to establish 
a school of like grade in Hanover. 

He met all remonstrances with a glowing picture of the 
delights of a serene old age passed among his books, and 
the sweet converse of cultured friends. 
But it is the old story. 

♦Green's Short History of the English People, p. 317. 



53 

Enforced idleness chafed the restless spirit. In the 
sluggish leisure of prosaic daily life, he recognized no 
trace of the charm of the "lettered ease" of his dreams. 
He entered political life, served a single term in the State 
Senate, tired of it, and declined re-election. 

Too late he recognized the mistake of having surren- 
dered his work in the fulness of his powers, and I am told 
by those who knew him well that he became moody and 
melancholy. 

His life thenceforth was uneventful. The war came, but 
he could take no part in it, and we can well imagine how 
galling that was to a man of his high spirit and strong 
convictions as to the justice and right of our contention. 

He survived the issue of the war but a few years, dying 
peacefully at Fredericksburg in 1868. 

The year in which "Concord" closed its doors, saw the 
establishment of "Hanover Academy" in the county of 
that name by Lewis Minor Coleman. 

I can glance but briefly at his life. 

He was the eldest son of Thomas Burbidge Coleman, 
Jr., and of Mary Coleman his wife, and was born in the 
county of Hanover, February 3rd., 1827. 

His father, a fine type of the Virginia country squire 
and long a representative of his county in the Assembly, 
died in the prime of life leaving three small children to be 
reared by the mother. 

Fortunately, she was well qualified for the task. 

According to the universal testimony of those who 
knew her, she was a noble type of the Virginia matron — 
vigorous in mind and character, highly educated and an 
enthusiastic lover of books — ready in her sympathies and 
of great tenderness of heart ; yet a woman of notable 
firmness and energy, and possessed of that "soft invinci- 
bility" of purpose, which was such a marked characteristic 
of her noble son. 



54 

She gave up her whole life to her children and grounded 
Lewis thoroughly in English and in the rudiments of Latin. 

Repeatedly in after years, he declared that whatever of 
good there was in his life or character, he owed to the 
careful training of this mother. 

When fourteen he was sent for a year to a private school 
at Col. Fontaine's in Hanover, and the next year entered 
" Concord." 

He was then a lad of ardent and generous nature, and 
of acquirement far beyond his years. Apart from the 
clannish affection which he felt for all who shared his 
blood, Frederick Coleman, who took but little interest in 
a stupid boy,''^ was fairly captivated by the cleverness of 
his brilliant young kinsman. With his quick intuition of 
the capacities of boys, he saw that this cleverness was no 
superficial precocity, but that the lad had in him the stuff 
of a real scholar. From that time down to the day of his 
death, Lewis Coleman was son rather than nephew to the 
master of Concord. 

Within a few months, he went to the top of the school 
and staid there. Yet none of his fellows envied him his 
high rank in the school, for with his bright and lively 
temperament, his boyish ardor for all manly sports, his 
high courage and steadfast loyalty in friendship, he was a 
true "boy's boy," and was as mnch looked up to on the 
play-ground as in the class-room. 

At seventeen he entered the University, graduated in 
four " schools "t his first year, and at the close of the 
second (in 1846) was graduated Master of Arts. 

In the autumn following his graduation, he returned to 
Concord as Assistant Master. He was but nineteen and 

*Letter of Dr. John Roy Baylor. 

•f-The "schools" at the University in which he graduated the first year 
were Latin, Greek, (then one " school," under title of " Ancient Lan- 
guages ") French, Mathematics, and Moral Philosophy. 



55 

the position in most cases would have been a trying one. 
Many of the boys in the school were as old as he, and 
some of them had been his schoolfellows. Yet, even at that 
early age, he displayed such a happy knack in winning the 
respect and confidence of his pupils, that they soon be- 
came as enthusiastic in their loyalty to him as to the head- 
master of the school. 

Thus, when three years later he established the new 
school, it was essentially but a more orderly development 
of the old. "Concord" had simply been removed from 
Caroline to Hanover. 

As an old " Concord " boy, he had seen the splendid 
results of Frederick Coleman's noble experiment in trust- 
ing the moral government of the school to the sentiment 
of personal honor, and he was resolved to make what was 
then first known as "the honor system" the chief corner- 
stone of the new foundation. Happily more than half the 
pupils enrolled the first session at "Hanover" were old 
" Concord" boys, and thus at the outset was fixed without 
any trouble on his part the tone of public sentiment in the 
school. 

But despite his loyalty and reverence for his old master 
and kinsman, he had seen the faults in the conduct of the 
old school, and wisely determined to make many modifi- 
cations of the careless old system. 

His sympathies with boys were as true and quick as 
those of Frederick Coleman, but his judgment was sounder 
as to the degree of liberty that may be wisely allowed a 
lad while still a school-boy. 

The reforms he introduced were in all respects admi- 
rable. 

He gave closer attention to the lower " forms " — assigned 
a lad to his classes only after careful examination — greatly 
extended the scope of instruction — above all, he introduced 



56 

a thorough system of order in the routine work of the 
school. Yet there were but few " rules." 

He made it his business as soon as a lad entered, to tell 
him briefly what he would and would not allow, and there 
the matter dropped. That he must be truthful and honor- 
able " went without saying." He set his face sternly 
against the foolish custom of " hazing," and, with all his 
gentleness of manner, his boys knew that he was not a 
man to speak twice when it was a question of discipline. 
He would tolerate no drinking of intoxicating liquors — 
no card-playing even "for fun" — nor would he allow any 
visiting between the cottages after nightfall without per- 
mission.* 

Such were his few "regulations." 

His treatment of boys was fair and manly, and his boys, 
big and little, felt it to be so. 

During the session, he himself, even when he had guests, 
would not touch a glass of wine nor play a game of whist. 
The " regulations," he held, were for all. 

He was a man of amiable disposition and naturally a 
counsellor of peaceful methods in the settlement of dis- 
putes, but, if mediation failed, he was ready, like "Old 
Fred," to stand by, impartial as a Greek chorus, and see 
fair play. 

As is now the custom of every honorable teacher, he 
scorned to play the spy, but if a boy was detected viola- 
ting his well-knowing regulations as to card-playing or 
drinking, he must leave the school at once. 

A second infringement of his regulation about visiting 
at night, met the same dreaded punishment. No amount 
of personal or "family influence" could shake his resolu- 
tion, when he had once decided that a boy must go. 

After his marriage, which took place within a few years 
of his coming to "Hanover," it was his custom, as it was 

♦Letter of Bishop Thomas U. Dudley. 



57 

Arnold's at Lalelam (and to some extent 'at Rugby) to have 
the boys often in his house, and to invite them in turn to 
dine at the family table. His old pupils tell me that his 
conversation on these occasions was frank to boyishness, 
and that after dinner he would discuss with them over a 
cigar whatever momentous question happened for the time 
to be agitating their little world. 

He took long walks with the boys, would constantly 
drop into their "cabins" for a smoke and a familiar chat, 
and thus kept himself fully informed as to the state of 
public opinion in the school. 

Outside his favorite classical studies, he was an indus- 
trious reader in the field of bclhs-lettres, and constantly 
stimulated a love of general reading in his pupils. He 
lent them books — gave freely of his counsel, and still more 
freely of his money, in the founding of a good school- 
library, and the establishment of debating societies, and 
in a hundred other ways made them feel not only the 
power and sincerity of his own generous enthusiasm for 
learning, but the strength of his personal interest in them- 
selves, their amusements and ambitions. 

Year by year, under his admirable management, the 
school grew in numbers, until in the years immediately 
preceding his election to the Latin professoriate in this 
institution, every vacancy (in his limit of eighty boys) for 
an ensuing session, was taken before the " long vacation " 
began. In 1859, after ten years of brilliant success, he 
was called to the chair of Latin in this University and ac- 
cepted the position. 

It is not my purpose to speak of him as a professor. 

His brief tenure of the position forbade the realization 
of the high hopes, which his friends confidently enter- 
tained as to his career on the broader field. 

But it is only simple justice to declare that, for the two 
years he held the professorship, he gave thorough satis- 



58 

faction to his class, his colleagues and to the Board of 
Visitors. His powers of acquisition and of concentration 
were of the first order, as were also his powers of clear 
and luminous exposition as an instructor. 

His reading in the field of the Latin language and its 
literature was wide and exact, he was fired with a generous 
ambition to sustain the high traditions of the chair, and, 
had he lived, there is every reason to believe that he would 
have left behind him a name in scholarship not unworthy 
of a place alongside that of his illustrious predecessor. 
No small evidence of the estimation held of his conduct 
of the chair, is found in the fact, that, when in 1861 he took 
the field as captain of a light battery and tendered his 
resignation, the Board of Visitors refused to accept it and 
unanimously voted to keep the position open for him. 
The time was now come when he was to give the supreme 
proof of how entirely every action of his blameless life was 
guided by a lofty sense of duty. 

To a man of his peaceful temperament and scholarly 
tastes, military life was in every way repugnant. His life- 
long ambition had been to make himself a great scholar 
and, at last, the conditions were all favorable for the full 
fruition of his aspirations. 

Domestic in all his tastes, no blare of trumpet or stirring 
martial strain ever moved him so deeply as the simple 
fireside music of a tender voice and the pattering of little 
feet. But, though " his life was gentle," the elements were 

So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up, 
And say to all the world, " This was a man." 

He was a man of deep convictions — he had been bred 
up in the strict States Rights school, and believed abso- 
lutely in the inherent right of a sovereign state to withdraw 
from the Federal compact. 

Like many another at the time, he hoped that temperate 
counsels might prevail at the last and the Union be pre- 



59 

served, but when Mr. Lincoln, in April of '6i, called fot^ 
75,000 men to coerce those states, which had but exercised 
what he held to be their sovereign right, the duty of Vir- 
ginia seemed plain to him as it did to thousands of others, 
who, indeed, loved the Union, but who "along with the 
blood inherited the spirit and the virtues of the old cham- 
pions of Freedom." 

The change wrought in the attitude of the strongest 
Union men in Virginia by that famous call is familiar to 
you all. One instance in the case of a fellow student of 
mine, I recall with amusement. 

The majority of the students were strong " secessionists 
per se" as they were then called, and many of us, who had 
big "tickets" and an unconquerable fondness for billiards, 
were by no means adverse to "seeking" even "at the can- 
non's mouth" that "reputation" likely to be denied us in 
the severe ordeal of the schools. On a sunny morning in 
April, a knot of us, gathered at "the Blue Cottage," were 
discussing with great warmth the affairs of the nation. It 
is needless to say, our voice was "all for war." A friend 
of mine, then one of the best students in the University, 
now a grave professor in a theological seminary and who 
but two years ago refused a bishoprick, alone remonstrated 
against the abandonment of our studies, and spoke so sen- 
sibly and temperately as to cast a very decided damper on 
our martial aspirations. 

Later, during the same day, our young " Sir Galahad," 
Percival Elliott of Georgia, who now fills a soldier's grave, 
and myself, walking up to "the Rotunda" from the Post 
Office, descried hurrying towards us a familiar figure clad 
in a uniform known to no service in Christendom — a re- 
volver as large as a small howitzer was buckled about his 
waist and a cavalry sabre of huge dimensions clanked 
furiously as he came towards us. Obstipuit visu Aeneas f 
We were literally spell bound with amazement. " Why, 



6o 

Nelson,* what in the name of all that's righteous, is the 
meaning of this ?" " Haven't got time to talk to you, boys — 
Lincoln has called for 75,000 men — enlisted five minutes 
ago in 'the Albemarle troop,'" and so sped away our 
peaceful counsellor of the morning. 

Never can I forget the night of the 17th of April, when 
on the sudden call of the Governor of the State for volun- 
teers to seize the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, the two compa- 
nies of students enrolled in the University at once offered 
themselves for the service and made rapid preparation to 
leave for what we proudly called "the seat of war." As 
we stood drawn up at the station, awaiting the train that 
was to bear us away to " fields of glory," Professor Hol- 
combe read to us the official announcement of the secession 
of the state, and Lewis Coleman came among us to wish 
us God speed. He scolded us, indeed, in kindly fashion 
for " running away from our books," but far more eloquent 
than the " reproof upon his lip " was " the smile in his 
eye," 

Then burst the storm, and, in brief time he felt that, 
despite his position here, his place was at " the front." 

Of his career in the army time forbids me to speak. 

He entered the military service as captain of a light 
battery and rose to be lieutenant-colonel of artillery. 

He embraced, indeed, the profession of arms with reluc- 
tance, but he discharged the duties of his new position 
with the same fidelity that had characterized him in the 
peaceful pursuit of letters. 

Everywhere — on the lines of Centreville — on the Penin- 
sula — in front of Richmond — he endured the privations 
and shared the triumphs of that glorious army to which 
he belonged. At last on December 13th., 1862, on the 
historic field of Fredericksburg, came to him the last of 

♦Rev. Kinloch Nelson, D. D., Professor of Greek, etc, in the Episcopal 
Theological Seminary at Alexandria. 



6i 

many fights. A few days before the battle, riding with a 
brother-officer towards Port Royal, he said : " If I am to 
fall in this war, I should prefer to fall here, for hard by my 
father lies buried."* 

Within three days he received the mortal wound, which 
won him his last promotion at the hands of the Great 
Captain. 

As the sun came bursting through the mist on that 
glorious morning, the army from its position looked down 
upon a scene, which stirred the heart of conscript and 
veteran alike. Countless batteries, supported by serried 
masses of infantry, were moving across the plain in all 
the pride and circumstance of war, sworn to wrest victory 
from the perch to which she so obstinately clung — the tat- 
tered battle-flags of " Rebellion." 

Far on the right, as the steady-marching columns passed 
the River Road, the youthful Paladin, Pelham, his cap 
bright with ribbons, was seen manoeuvring his single 
" napoleon " within close range of the looming masses of 
the enemy, doing his devoir with a valor so gay and 
debomiaire as drew to him the heart of an army. 

As "all day long the noise of battle rolled," Coleman, 
whose guns were held in reserve near the Hamilton House, 
sat on his horse chafing at delay, and it was late in the 
evening when, two guns of Dance's battery being " ordered 
in " to the left of Poague's " Rockbridge Artillery " on 
Jackson's extreme right, he sought and obtained leave to 
accompany the section. 

The position was one of the hottest on the whole front. 
The enemy had got the exact range of the hill on which 
these batteries were posted, and, opposing thrice as many 
guns, poured upon them an unceasing rain of shot and 
shell. 

Slowly the sun went down on that hard-fought field and 

*Prof. Morris's Sketch of Lewis Coleman in the Universitv Memorial. 



62 

still our scholar-soldier, calm and serene amidst this fire 
of hell, cheered on his grimy cannoneers by joyful voice 
and valiant example. 

About dusk in the thickest of the terrific cannonade, he 
was struck down by a fragment of shell, another piece of 
which killed instantly an old pupil of his here — a lad of 
surpassing beauty, who, learned and accomplished beyond 
his years, gave highest promise of adding still greater 
lustre to the historic name he bore — Randolph Fairfax, of 
whom his captain said with trembling lips, when he saw 
the slight boyish form lying close under the gun he had 
served so well, the delicately-chiselled features calm in 
death and the soft brown hair wet with his brave young 
blood : " Fairfax looked more like a woman and acted more 
like a man than any soldier in the battery." 

Grievous as was his hurt. Colonel Coleman refused to 
leave the field, and with an heroic generosity, which irre- 
sistibly reminds us of Sidney's self-abnegation at Zutphen, 
begged the surgeons to attend first to those whose neces- 
sities seemed greater than his. Tenderly they bore him 
next day to " Edgehill " in Caroline, and there, after 
weeks of intensest agony borne with serene constancy — 
almost in sight of the old playing-fields of " Concord," 
where so often his voice had rung out in boyish glee — 
came at last to the gentle scholar and daring soldier the 
death counted sweet and honorable. 

Of the beauty of his Christian life, there is no need for 
me to speak. From the days of his eager young man- 
hood, he had sought to rule his every action and utterance 
by the spirit of his Divine Master, and when he fell on 
sleep, 'twas not " the iron sleep " of Homeric hero,* slain, 
even as he, fighting for fatherland, but that blessed sleep, 
fraught with life eternal, which He giveth His beloved. 

*wf b uh) av^i Tteauv KoiuTjaaro xalaeov iinvov k. t. 2,. //, xi, 241. 



63 

That briefest and sublimest biography ever penned was 
his, in truth : " Ajid Enoch walked with God, a?id was not, 
for God took Jiini.'^ 

Thus, my brothers of the Alumni, I have sought to 
trace for you the evolution of the Virginia " University 
School," as it exists to-day, and to portray in homely 
fashion the lives and methods of the two great school- 
masters, who were the pioneers of the new education. 

But let me not be misunderstood. 

It would be doing great injustice to the labors of many 
excellent teachers to ascribe to the Colemans the whole 
credit for the improvement in the tone and quality of aca- 
demic instruction, which marks the quarter of a century 
between 1835 and 1860. Other schools, some taught by 
graduates of this University, some by graduates of other 
institutions, were doing good work, as I can gratefully 
attest.* But, unquestionably, the Colemans were the pio- 
neers in the great revolution, which within a few years 
swept away the vicious old order. 

To "Concord" is due the inauguration of that glorious 
"honor-system," which fosters every noble impulse of the 
boyish heart, and which is to-day the chief glory of our 
Virginia schools. 

To "Concord" and "Hanover" equally, is due the sig- 
nal advance in the scope and thoroughness of University 
preparation, which for years gave the young men trained 
at these schools a prestige here enjoyed by no other stu- 
dents. 

And to them again is due that reflex action, which is as 
truly the distinctive mark of healthy vitality in education 
as in the human body. 

As young men came here with better preparation, the 

*I refer to the "Hampton Academy," Hampton, Virginia (Col. John B, 
Gary, A. M., Principal), where many VirgiTiia lads were fitted for the 
University. 



64 

University steadily raised her standards, and, in turn, her 
courageous insistance on her tests, compelled a still higher 
quality of training in the schools. 

This has gone on slowly, but surely. 

Gessner Harrison, during his latter years here, was wont 
to declare that pupils were coming to him from the leading 
preparatory schools with a better knowledge of Latin 
than twenty years before had been carried away by his 
graduates.* 

Were Lewis Coleman in his chair to-day, he would be 
the first to admit the same. 

Surely to all thoughtful men, who hold dear the higher 
education in Virginia, it must be apparent that the mainte- 
nance of such schools is essential to the security of the 
high position held by this institution among the great 
Universities of the land. 

They are the natural feeder's of the University and must 
remain so, certainly for many years to come, so long as 
she maintains her present standards. 

When Frederick Coleman began teaching in 1834 there 
were but 210 students in the University — before Lewis 
Coleman ceased, there were between six and seven hundred. 

In the history of the evolution of every profession, the 
thoughtful student notes that it grows in honor as it grows 
in emolument. Such is the history of law, of medicine, 
even of the church. Not a few men of good social posi- 
tion taught school in Virginia, at least for a time, prior to 
1835. Yet the weight of testimony is, that the profession 
was not regarded, as was the law or medicine, as the pro- 
fession for a gentleman to choose. f 

*Rev. John A. Broadus's admirable Memorial of Gessner Harrison de- 
livered before the Soc. of the Alumni in 1873. 

•{•As illustrative of this assertion (in support of which I could give num. 
berless citations), Col. Frank Ruffin writes me : " Mr. Thomas Ritchie, 
who was always an enthusiastic man, had been very much impressed by 
some of the opinions of William Godwin in his book entitled the Enquiry 



^^5 

But when young men of good position saw these two 
gentlemen of the landed-proprietor class, winning as school- 
masters such emolument as fell to none save the foremost 
at the bar or in medicine, great numbers of them felt free 
to follow their scholarly inclinations, and gladly conse- 
crated their lives to a calling, which had become in the eyes 
of the world at once lucrative and honorable. 

Such, as I have tried to sketch for you, is "the ever- 
lasting possession," which these two men bequeathed to 
Virginia, and surely, in this place beyond all others — here 
gathered about the feet of our Mother, whom they ever 
loved with passionate devotion, and who sent them forth 
equipped for their great work in life — it is meet that we 
should do honor to their memory and seek to fix their 
place among our Virginia " Worthies." 

When the young Virginian of a hundred years to come 
shall bend over the page, which chronicles the history of 

(Concerninir Political Justice, &c., 1793), a work which had a great run in its 
(lay; and having determined to do that which philanthropy required as his 
work for mankind, he selected school-teaching as his proper sphere and 
adhered to it until ill-health compelled him to relinquish it ; when he took 
up what he deemed the next most important calling and became the editor 
of a newspaper, which lie named The Enquirer after the title of Godwin's 
hook. When he determined to open his school, which he established at 
Fredericksburg, his mother (who was my great grand-mother) paid a visit 
to Judge Roane, her nephew, to induce him to use his influence with her 
son and persuade him not to follow a profession, which was thought by 
herself and not a few others of that day to be at best but inglorious and 
rather beneath the rank and dignity of a gentleman. It is proper to add 
tlint Judge Roane had so little sympathy with his aunt's mortification that 
he sent his son, the late W. H. Roane, to the school. It was from him that 
I had this account. Though in after life he became very intimate with 
Mr. Ritchie, yet it was a joke with him to tell him how, when at school, he 
had sworn in his wrath that, as soon as he got to be a man, he would whip 
Tom Ritchie for the many floggings he had given him." In its day "The 
Etiqjiirer'' was the most powerful paper in this country and it may well 
be doubted whether any single journal to-day exerts so direct an influence 
in shaping political measures. This letter of Col. Ruffin rescues from 
oblivion how it came bv its name. 



lAR 3 1803 



66 

his native state, and shall read with kindling eye and flushing 
cheek the long roll of those, who have made her "glorious 
by the pen" and "famous by the sword," though he shall 
meet there greater names, which, perchance, may quicker 
stir the pulse's play, yet shall he see there none worthier 
of his reverence or of his emulation than the names of 
Frederick William and Lewis Minor Coleman. 



IFJI '10 



VIRGINIA SCHOOLS 

BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION, 



WITH A SKETCH nl 



FREDERICK WILLIAM COLEMAN, M. A., 



LEWIS MINOR COL.EMAN, M. A. 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED KEEOKE THE 

S O C I K T Y OF T H t A L U M N 1 

OF IHE 

U N I V E R S I T Y OF V I R (i I N I A , 

ynne 27th., 1888, 

' * nv 

W. OORDON McCABK. 

l'KTKRSBUR(i, VA. 

ITia.lSHED r.\ A STANDINC ORDER OF IHE SOCIKTV. 



CHARLOTTESVILLE, V \, ; 

Chronicle Steam Book Mini 'Jof/ Offiec. 
1890. 



